Hogwarts Legacy Can’t Cast Aside Debate Over J.K. Rowling
The developer behind a highly anticipated video game set in the “Harry Potter” universe, but a century before the familiar story, was always going to have to confront the expectations of a zealous fandom.
There was the challenge of creating an engaging experience beyond the well-known tale of the Boy Who Lived, and the risk of disappointing fans by omitting beloved aspects of the wizarding world. (Sorry, no quidditch.) But when the developer, Avalanche Software, began work several years ago on an immersive role-playing game set in Hogwarts, it may not have anticipated that perhaps the biggest challenge of all would stem from the series’s celebrated author.
The conversation among fans and gamers as Hogwarts Legacy approaches its official release date on Friday has been dominated not by talk about spell casting or Hippogriff taming, but by J.K.
Rowling’s remarks on transgender issues. Potter fans have been grappling with those comments for years, especially after Rowling published an extensive essay in 2020 in which she said a movement of transgender activists was “seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators.” “I want trans women to be safe,” she wrote. “At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe.” Fans who considered Rowling’s views odious and anti-trans — a sentiment she denies — clashed with those who sympathized with them, while others argued that the artist could be separated from her art.
