Hogwarts Legacy to be Steam Deck Verified at launch

I will buy it as it could be the first wonderful game from the Harry Potter franchise. Since the first book decades ago, I wish for a good game in this universe, and there were a lot of bad ones until now.

Regarding J.K. Rollings quotes:
I don't get why many people feel so much hate. Rollings is an old school feminists and feels threatened, that something on scientifically very thin ice could (or a very young trend, or at least not as well researched until now) undermine women's rights. So her intentions are good, I can respect that. But I cannot respect the hate she gets or the call for boycott of the Hogwarts game, of which profit goes more to the developers and the publishers than in her pocket.

That's actually not right in virtually any respect, especially the "thin ice" respect. Medical(!) transitions of trans people happened in the first half of the last century. Research on trans people was burned by the Nazis, but there was a whole institute in Berlin only dedicated this and related. It's neither a "new trend" nor badly researched. The only thing that's recent is more medical availability and acceptance of the fact outside of science.

The science behind it is quite simple: Things like pronouns, how you dress, etc. is not encoded in DNA (surprise!). It's what we usually call "gender expression" which is heavily based around stereotypes and culture (scotsmen will gladly sport "skirts"). Our genes encode various properties of which some can be visually discerned from so-called "primary and secondary sex characteristics". Usually, in language, we use gender expression as well as those sex characteristics to choose how we address people. This is... completely arbitrary. There's *no* biological reason for that. Similarly, the term "woman" in our day-to-day interaction is more related to these expressions, sex characteristics etc., as to actual "female homo sapiens". This relationship is (and never has been) strictly 1:1, since we have intersex people or other ambiguouties. Also, note that other cultures that had a "third gender" for a long time have obviously encoded all this differently. We need to understand that "trans" doesn't redefine chromosomes, it's just acknowledging the fact that when we speak about "women" and "men" in society we've never really talked about the biological background (after all, in my day-to-day interaction I couldn't care less whether the person in front of me *actually* has a penis, *actually* has XY chromosomes, *actually* ...).

The "other" thing is that many trans people experience a long studied and well-recognized phenomenon known as "body dysphoria" which requires therapy, i.e., medical transition.

Those two issues,

• social dysphoria: being forced to express your gender in a way you're not comfortable due to our culture enforcing a strong link b/w "biological (fe)male" (which itself is even more complex than binary) and the social concept of "(wo)man" and


• body dysphoria: suffering under the wrong body
  

are quite old, although the terminology in older material is a bit "dated" (transvestites, transsexuals, hermaphrodite, ...). But it goes back *a long* time. Basically around the same time first wave feminism happened.

I'm disappointed as always at the number of people who just don't care about how toxic the HP series is and how willing many are to give it extra publicity. Is it really worth indirectly donating to anti-lgbt hate groups just so that you can play a game where you quell a rebellion that seeks freedom for the goblins, one group of intelligent magical creatures whose oppression is consistently celebrated by the books and series as a whole?

uhhh, what?

There's a video that's pretty relevant here (it goes over a lot of the problems with Harry Potter, and there's a good chance that, if you watch it, you'll never be able to think about HP the same way again). However, a few examples of the terrible ways that the HP series treats non-humans follows:

• House elves are said to enjoy being enslaved, and Hermione (the only character to ever question this) is mocked for thinking that enslaving them is bad.


• Centaurs, giants, and many other magical creatures experience a lot of discrimination at the government level (such as being banned from having wands). The problem is so bad that the giants (among others) join Voldemort, despite knowing how terrible he is, in hopes that they'll be treated as equals in the new regime. Their valid complaints are not addressed by the protagonists in any way.

Goblins face all of the unaddressed discrimination from the second point, and on top of that are suspiciously similar to anti-semitic stereotypes of Jewish people. This makes it extra concerning that they were the race chosen as the ones whose rebellion the player will crush in the upcoming Hogwarts game.

Tangled.
Soooo . . . I don't like the stuff Rowling has been saying. And it does seem like she's been doing more than just mentioning if asked, she's been like using her fame as a platform to amplify these views. And those views, if adopted by people she successfully persuades, could have nasty real world consequences for a fair number of decent people just trying to live their lives. So that's serious.

I think we can say "do have" instead of "could have" ;-)

Currently various US states are in the process of banning gender-inclusive terminology, forcefully medically detransitioning trans people, banning drag shows, ...

Finally, I do think there's a philosophical tension between strong feminism and the way trans is thought of, that is not just about old fashioned feminism being old fashioned, and that the trans-supportive community might want to think about. It's a pity some feminists have been so dang aggressive and absolutist about it, that's gone bad all around. But the thing is, feminism has been to a fair degree about the idea that gender roles and similar social baggage surrounding gender are arbitrary, social constructs that shouldn't really have much to do with what genitalia you're sporting. And consciously and intellectually, I'm sure many trans people and the community around them would agree. But trans identity tends to revolve around the idea of changing physical things and the gender roles associated with them, as a linked process. Implicitly that makes gender roles essential rather than arbitrary--becoming a gender with (hormones, surgery etc) involves taking on that gender's roles, or looked at the other way, taking on a gender's roles requires making physical changes to become that gender. Functionally, that approach supports the idea that men are supposed to be a certain way and women are supposed to be a certain way. And feminists, used to thinking about the roles rather than the sheer physicality, would reasonably worry about what seems from that perspective to be saying that the solution if you can't hack the roles assigned to you is not to rebel against the socially enforced roles themselves but to switch teams so you can conform to a set you're more comfortable with. So I can see some feminists being wary. At the same time, they need to accept that fundamentally trans isn't about that--it seems to be about the actual body. Although . . . people's body self-image is also socially mediated . . . it's all really complicated, but I do think that there's a need for tackling the relationship between trans issues and some of the deeper feminist thought about gender roles, rather than letting them just slide past each other as if they're unconnected, or either dismissing the other.

This is the general perception of the issue, yes, which is kinda strange since most older and contemporary feminists have had and don't have no issue with trans people. Take Judith Butler for example, whose work on gender is... much more nuanced and complex. I tried to capture the *very simplified* essence in the previous comment.

Framing this as "strong" or "radical" feminism versus "trans people" is a common misconception. Most radical feminism is quite supportive of transgender issues as they do very much shatter the concept of gender being (strongly) interlinked with sex (which, in itself, is quite a complex issue and very much non-binary if you get down to it).

Historically and cross-culturally, you can find that gender and gender expression is quite different in different times and places. Only relatively recently (in terms of humanity on earth) did we encode gender in two, rather strict, norms. Many cultures sport a "third gender" and others, did see it kind of more as power categories, basically they had gender roles but these were only initially bound to sex.

Even older Mesopotamia had a goddess who quite literally was supposed to be able to turn "men into women and women into men" and many of whose priestesses we'd nowadays call "trans women".

Those fixed categories only became "popular" in the medium or later stages of christianity (early christianity was quite flexible in that regard) and thus in the "Western" culture. And *that's* what (radical) feminists want to deconstruct.

Gender roles are a social construct. But gender identity is (pretty much proven at this point) not. Note that they do not want you to "not express your gender" but the *how* of gender expression is deconstructed. Women don't need to stay at home and wear dresses, men don't need to drive fast cars and manhandle their wife. It's absolutely in line to express your gender either in-line with social stereotypes, or not. As long as you're *free to do so*.

However there's obviously the point about trying to deconstruct the underlying stereotypes. Of course, "high femme" trans women are intuitively kinda counteracting that. However, there are a *lot* more cis women who are "high femme". So why is the issue with trans women? Because the implicit assumption is, that these women do that to "be" female. But that's turning the whole thing the wrong way as Judith Butler would say: These (trans) women are women (by their gender identity), *just like* the cis women are. There's *no difference* b/w a trans woman being "high femme" and a cis woman being so, in terms of stereotype deconstruction.

Also note that trans people have quite a history of not really fitting themselves too neatly into "either" corner and genderqueer people in general found various creative ways to express gender that absolutely blow up the gender stereotypes. A friend of mine is often sporting a scottish kilt, a mohawk, bright red lipstick, jump boots, ear rings and (non-weapon, style-only) knucklebusters.

could have nasty real world consequences for a fair number of decent people just trying to live their lives. So that's serious.

I think we can say "do have" instead of "could have" ;-)

Currently various US states are in the process of banning gender-inclusive terminology, forcefully medically detransitioning trans people, banning drag shows, ...

I don't think we can put all that down to Rowling's influence, though. I think US states can manage their own bigotry without really listening much to some British woman that most of the more Christian US bigots think is one of Satan's minions.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 14 January 2023 at 1:06 am UTC

Although I was never interested on Harry Potter, I'm split on the issue of boycotting writers that are racists or biggots. Cuz if you follow that rule, that some ppl call it "cancel culture" you have to wipe out the majority of recent and not so recent writers and artists sadly.
I guess that if a new lord of the rings games is released I would personally buy it. I'm my book the first book we should start burning is the bible and other religious books, that's the number one problem causing more wars and injustice more than anything else. Since that won't happen ever.. I will pretend JK Rowling or Tolkien are normal persons and carry on .

It isn't just about not reading a book because the author is or was a bigot. JKR actively campaigns for harmful policies, so giving her money to spend on making your and your pals' life worse is... not great. She also uses the popularity of her works to prop up her platform, regardless of whether the stories on their own are bad. We are talking about someone that had previously won a human rights award for writing beloved children's books, and then had it withdrawn for her bigoted campaigning.

It is quite different from discussing long dead authors, or even living authors that express some bigoted opinions in their private lives or in an interview but don't use the works to advertise a platform of hate and ignorance.

It also doesn't mean everyone's positive feelings and personal experiences with the fiction are invalid and you must hate it or else. Nor that the works must be forgotten and never read again. But knowing these problems is important, so it must be discussed, and it is more than understandable that people whose lives are made meaningfully less safe by the author will have strong negative feelings about it. It doesn't make them book burners or anything like that.

look your comment seems very reasonable and logic, but lets call things how they are. Within the "cancel culture" there is ppl actively calling out to burn books or precious works of art. That's why I said I had split opinions about this because I don't like radical approaches in neither ends. This problem should be handled other way like having proper anti discrimination laws, JK Rowling should not be allowed to say such things. She should be fined. Her books are not the issue. It's a "free peach" issue, free speech is not about targeting and promoting hatred against minorities, here she crossed a line. She should be fined and legally muzzled.

I would like to see actual quotes from her that spreads hatred toward minorities. As far as I have seen, she has crossed no such line. That line is literally if she had incited violence toward anyone, and as far as I am aware, she never has.
As far as I have seen, she basically has defended her position as being a woman. Which is perfectly her right. I think she has also stated that men who try to be women are still not women. An opinion she also has the right to state.
Start censoring opinions you don't like and you start getting into some scary territory.

I'm disappointed as always at the number of people who just don't care about how toxic the HP series is and how willing many are to give it extra publicity. Is it really worth indirectly donating to anti-lgbt hate groups just so that you can play a game where you quell a rebellion that seeks freedom for the goblins, one group of intelligent magical creatures whose oppression is consistently celebrated by the books and series as a whole?

uhhh, what?

There's a video that's pretty relevant here (it goes over a lot of the problems with Harry Potter, and there's a good chance that, if you watch it, you'll never be able to think about HP the same way again). However, a few examples of the terrible ways that the HP series treats non-humans follows:

• House elves are said to enjoy being enslaved, and Hermione (the only character to ever question this) is mocked for thinking that enslaving them is bad.

Hang on, hang on!!!! I've read only part of the series, but I've read that bit. She isn't mocked by, as it were, the author's voice. She's mocked by many other characters (much as every sort of halfway serious progressive activist is mocked in real life, anti-slavery ones having certainly been no exception), but she perseveres despite adversity and in the end does manage to free the house elf character, who, after taking some time to assimilate the notion due to a very traditionalist outlook (and, hard to be sure, perhaps censoring himself because he knows it would be unwise not to), comes round to valuing freedom. I believe in later books that I haven't read, a movement has begun to try to free house elves.
So no, what you're saying is totally the opposite of what is going on in the book. It's presenting the difficulty of doing the right thing--but it's definitely presenting it as the right thing.

As to the giants . . . It's pretty clear that there are many ways the existing dispensation in the Potter books is seen as far from perfect and even pretty bad. Just, not as bad as bleedin' Voldemort. I don't think having some group so upset at being discriminated against by the current government that they join the definitive bad guy just to change the situation, can be considered the book saying it's good to discriminate against people. And it's the kind of thing that definitely happens in real life--how many people with real problems and grievances have been taken in by vile charlatans giving them false promises, in just the last few years of world politics?

Rowling has a very bad thing about her politics. Maybe she's got others. But I think it's wrong to go around inventing ones because of course everything else about her has to be bad now.

Just to clarify something, it seems most people don't really know what a boycott is. If you need help understanding, study the Civil Rights Movement in America. A real boycott is well-organized, well-planned and is designed to bring an organization or service to a complete halt. Simply deciding you don't want to support something is not a boycott. It's an individual choice that will have no real-world consequences outside of making you feel better about yourself. And that's not meant to be an insult or to tell you not to do it. It's just reality.

The problem with boycotting a person, especially one who already has more wealth than she can ever spend, is that even if everyone collectively decided not to buy anything from her, it wouldn't hurt her at all. That's why "cancel culture" isn't a real thing, and everyone who has supposedly been "cancelled" is still rich and powerful. The people who speak out against ignorance and bigotry have just as much right to speech as the bigots, and speaking out against them is a far better tool than simply quietly not buying something they might earn some royalties from.

That's why "cancel culture" isn't a real thing, and everyone who has supposedly been "cancelled" is still rich and powerful.

Sorry, but that's not true.

There are numerous cases of "small time" folk who were just working some random low-pay job that got fired for daring to follow the wrong people, have an opinion someone didn't like entirely unrelated to their job, or was just rumoured to.
Really tame stuff nowhere near whatever JKR puts out on a regular basis nowadays.

Cancel culture is entirely a real thing, but it depends on the individual victims of it how much of an effect it actually has on them. Someone with wealth obviously won't be affected much, but that doesn't mean they didn't get cancelled.
And some have - in hindsight - actually benefitted from it, for sure. I'd say Hogwards Legacy will most likely benefit a lot from all the crybullies drumming up drama and riling up people in support of the game. At least that's what it currently looks like.

But if you define "cancelled" only as something successfully ending someone's entire existence / oust them from public life forever, then you are seeing things way too narrow and ignore what some people went through, often without really doing anything to deserve such extreme harassment.
Even an unsuccessful cancellation is still a cancellation - the outcome does not define what it is, the act does. And the act is always a vile attempt at suppressing someone('s opinion) or anything even remotely connected to it.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 14 January 2023 at 8:42 am UTC

scotsmen will gladly sport "skirts"

I don't think that Scots like their kilts being called skirts. Even with quotes.

I only like the first four books. The rest is rather ridiculous since she thinks that randomly executing characters and a racist teacher employing physical torture on a child equals mature story.

Huh, I've never read the books. Recently bought the movie pack in 4k... and got about 2.5 movies into it and then paused for a while. Not that they aren't watchable (pretty sure I've seen up to 5 at one point), I just have more things to do that I'd rather spend my time on... Eventually I'll get to all of them.

I really liked the Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality fanfic. Not sure I can enjoy vanilla HP (such as this) after reading that.

I started reading that. Ehhhhh . . . I wasn't as impressed with it as it was with itself.

To each their own :) Yes, HP can come across as a bit full of himself in that story sometimes, but that's part of the story... which is great, full of surprises without Ex Machina (as in, the reader is given enough understanding of the world to anticipate possible actions, which is generally not the case with vanilla HP). I like that some things are explained, others have clearly defined mechanisms, and the character asks himself the same questions (and more) that I do when coming across something new.

To quote the author:

This fic is widely considered to have really hit its stride starting at around Chapter 5. If you still don't like it after Chapter 10, give up.

I'm disappointed as always at the number of people who just don't care about how toxic the HP series is and how willing many are to give it extra publicity. Is it really worth indirectly donating to anti-lgbt hate groups just so that you can play a game where you quell a rebellion that seeks freedom for the goblins, one group of intelligent magical creatures whose oppression is consistently celebrated by the books and series as a whole?

uhhh, what?

There's a video that's pretty relevant here (it goes over a lot of the problems with Harry Potter, and there's a good chance that, if you watch it, you'll never be able to think about HP the same way again). However, a few examples of the terrible ways that the HP series treats non-humans follows:

• House elves are said to enjoy being enslaved, and Hermione (the only character to ever question this) is mocked for thinking that enslaving them is bad.

Hang on, hang on!!!! I've read only part of the series, but I've read that bit. She isn't mocked by, as it were, the author's voice. She's mocked by many other characters (much as every sort of halfway serious progressive activist is mocked in real life, anti-slavery ones having certainly been no exception), but she perseveres despite adversity and in the end does manage to free the house elf character, who, after taking some time to assimilate the notion due to a very traditionalist outlook (and, hard to be sure, perhaps censoring himself because he knows it would be unwise not to), comes round to valuing freedom. I believe in later books that I haven't read, a movement has begun to try to free house elves.
So no, what you're saying is totally the opposite of what is going on in the book. It's presenting the difficulty of doing the right thing--but it's definitely presenting it as the right thing.

As to the giants . . . It's pretty clear that there are many ways the existing dispensation in the Potter books is seen as far from perfect and even pretty bad. Just, not as bad as bleedin' Voldemort. I don't think having some group so upset at being discriminated against by the current government that they join the definitive bad guy just to change the situation, can be considered the book saying it's good to discriminate against people. And it's the kind of thing that definitely happens in real life--how many people with real problems and grievances have been taken in by vile charlatans giving them false promises, in just the last few years of world politics?

Rowling has a very bad thing about her politics. Maybe she's got others. But I think it's wrong to go around inventing ones because of course everything else about her has to be bad now.

The author's voice isn't directly a thing in HP, so yeah, Hermione isn't mocked by the author's voice. Instead, the story itself implies that she's wrong. Harry (who acts as an audience insert when it comes to many aspects of the wizarding world) starts out neutral on the issue. However, as the subplot goes on, Harry is convinced that Hermione is wrong and the rest of the wizards (who want to keep house elves in slavery) are right. Furthermore, a lot of the stereotypes that are used to mock feminists are applied to Hermione in this subplot. It's implied by the story that she is acting on behalf of people who don't want her help, she's treated as just an annoyance (rather than someone with good points) by everyone she talks to, and even the name of the organization she starts ("SPEW") is clearly intended to be considered a joke by the reader. Hermione doesn't free any house elves, and Dobby (who was freed by Harry) is treated as an exception to the house elves as a whole for not wanting to be enslaved. Later in the story, Harry comes to own a house elf, whom he does not free. (The story encourages him to be a "nice slave owner" rather than freeing his slave.) There is no movement for the freedom of house elves after the book forgets about SPEW. With all of these claims you're making, I'm not sure we read the same books.

Having people be oppressed so hard they join the bad guy isn't something that makes the books bad on its own. The problem is that the books treat the system (that's so bad it lead oppressed groups to join the bad guy) as if it's mostly fine, just needing a few "good men" in charge to fix everything. Furthermore, the book treats the giants, werewolves, and the like as completely in the wrong for joining voldemort. It doesn't take the time to discuss how the oppression faced by the wizards' government caused them to go down that path, and it doesn't talk about what changes they're going to put in place to make sure that this never happens again. Starting, or even ending, with the world in a terribly oppressive state isn't bad in and of itself, but the problems with the world need to be discussed by the book; the people framed as good by the narrative need to question the system rather than trusting that the old government will make everything better again.

This problem the book has with always looking at things from the system's point of view (not the view of those who are oppressed by the system) makes it extra bad that the player will be tasked with taking down a goblin rebellion. I don't think the game will encourage the player to think about why the goblins are rebelling - it will most likely just tell the player that the goblins are bad and to kill them. This is a big problem, because a lot of times in real life, people who rebel have good reasons for doing so. Consider groups like the Black Panthers, who were told by the white liberals that, instead of rebelling against the system, they should work within the system to get the change they wanted. They have since made up their own version of history, where Black liberation has been "fully achieved" by the efforts of asking nicely. However, the system was never designed to listen to marginalized people, so peaceful protest would never have seen any improvements on its own. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. himself wrote:

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

JK Rowling's work is dripping with that "negative peace" that MLK describes. The government which will hide the problems with society is seen as better than the activists or revolutionaries who would expose it, and, in the books, the main characters fight only to restore that government, not to fix (or even think about) the very serious problems that it had. Hermione's fight to stop the enslavement of house elves is seen as bad by the books because it calls attention to a problem that would be much more convenient to ignore.

I think it's probably for the best to close this up now. Thanks all.