this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Millions of people have bad taste. Shocker

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (15 children)

Smug gamer thinks what others like is wrong. Shocker.

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I wonder it's because it attracted a bunch of people who weren't into games, but are huge Harry Potter fans.

[–] [email protected] 62 points 9 months ago (5 children)

It's also on every platform, including the Switch, while TotK is just on the Switch.

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[–] [email protected] -2 points 9 months ago (7 children)

I absolutely loved hogwarts legacy personally. Any other year it would have won more awards, just that Baldurs Gate and Alan Wake were even better. We really were spoiled in 2023

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago (17 children)

Hasnt Nintendo like, not released digital sales for TotK? I remember reading that recently.

Not a cope post, I don't care if you play the terf game, just actually curious.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

If you are WB, I can't see how you compare the performance of this game vs the performance of Suicide Squad (which had similar development time) and not rethink your approach to future licensed titles

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

Completed both 100% and they're such great fun games.

Hogwarts was awesome to walk through the wizardry world. Battling wizards, poachers, spiders, etc. Finding all the secrets and going through the story. Finished the game in a week, I just couldn't put the controller down.

[–] [email protected] 173 points 9 months ago (11 children)

It's honestly amazing how well this game sold considering how mid the gameplay actually is. Having a popular IP really helped.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

My wife, whose entire history with video games is Sims 3, Animal Crossing: NH, and Pokémon Go, played through this game start to finish and loved it. It wasn't really made for "gamers", it was made for Harry Potter fans that wanted to play a Hogwarts game. It didn't succeed as a gaming revolution, it succeeded in bringing non-gamers to buy it.

Personally, I love that she got into it whether it's mid or not, because it introduced her to a lot of the mechanics necessary to play "real" games in the future. And she had a lot of fun.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I'm both a gamer and HP fan.

I thought the game was great, and I didn't really realize the depths of people's distaste for it, I guess.

Was it crazy revolutionary? No, but it was fun.

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[–] [email protected] 75 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Eh, people don't buy for the gameplay mechanics most of the time, they buy for what they see in the trailers and read in the descriptions. Being the only videogame available for this IP, having the WB marketing juggernaut behind it, releasing at a time of the year without much competition, coming out on every single platform - it would have been weird if this game wasn't the best selling one in 2023.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Exactly. You don't know what the gameplay is until after you buy the game, unless you are savvy and watch reviews or something, which hardly any consumers do.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Embarrassing.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago (5 children)

Has anyone played both? Im loving zelda at the moment and wouldn't mind moving onto this next

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Zelda is the better game. Problem is (sales wise) the Zelda franchise isn't nearly as popular outside of gaming circles, and access to this game is locked to those that own a Switch, whereas HL is on all platforms

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I played both. Both are excellent games, and both also have flaws.

I think Zelda was by far the better game - HL isn't really on the same level as it at all, design-wise, story-wise, or or in terms of things to do.

HL's strength is definitely the world itself - the Hogwarts and Hogsmeade areas in particular are both incredibly well done and very faithful to the source material. The other areas are just alright.

I'd say HL's weaknesses become most apparent if you're a completionist. Things can get very repetitive if you're going for 100%. I did, and I honestly think you'll like it a lot more if you just don't.

It's still lots of fun though. Zelda was my most played game in 2023 and HL was kind of far behind, and everything else combined would still probably be a distant third.

I absolutely agree with the other people saying HL is generic and propped up by the IP. But for me that was enough.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (2 children)

The story of HL is also one of its weaknesses. It's a generic chosen one story with unmemorable characters.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 9 months ago (5 children)

Hogwarts is fun for about 30 hours roleplaying as a wizard, as a casual potter fan. I got really bored of it after that and never finished the game. At its core it really is very generic, it's really propped up by the IP. That's not to say it's bad by any means but its not got the depth of Zelda.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I think the biggest issue for me was how large the map was. They did the castle and hogsmede very well, but then threw in a bunch of filler content in the other towns. If they had stuck to the more core areas only, the game wouldn't have gotten so stale later on.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I have. Hogwarts Legacy has really good graphics but it's honestly pretty generic, it only sold so well because there are millions of harry potter fans out there.

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[–] [email protected] 60 points 9 months ago (4 children)

It's multi-platform, uses one of the biggest IPs of an entire generation and seems to do it quite well too. Everything else would have been more surprising to me.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 9 months ago (19 children)

I guess all the twitter drama around the author matters less to the real world. It's impressive to see how a vocal minority can completely distort what is happening offline.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I think that the masses are mostly disengaged with terminally-online type discourse. The only reason I knew JK Rowling was TERF was because of reading it on here, so if you are only on social media to follow your old high school classmates on facebook, you'd probably never find out

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (41 children)

Hogwarts came out a quarter of a year earlier and released on every platform compared to Zelda only being on one.

I wouldn't take that as a indictment that J.K.'s terf bullshit didn't have an impact on sales.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, and the fact that people basically can't talk about this game without mentioning it got boycotted because one of the people who makes money from it is a massive piece of transphobic shit is a small step forward all on its own

[–] [email protected] 26 points 9 months ago (2 children)

In that sense, it worked. Let's face it: The people who don't care about the author's raging bigotry were never going to be convinced regardless, but there were a lot of us who didn't even consider playing it because of the TERF.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I mean, I didn't consider playing it because I've never been a fan of Harry Potter, but Rowling's ramblings definitely didn't do anything to change my mind.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I was a moderately engaged HP fan before I learned what a colossally awful human the author is, but her TERF ramblings also made me realize there's quite a lot of racial and ethnic stereotypes baked into the franchise. It's probably the fastest I've ever totally abandoned an interest in a series. Even if we do separate the works from the author like so many fanbois suggest, they're still awful.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

Anecdotally, everyone I’ve talked to about it doesn’t care. They don’t like she’s a TERF and some even condemn her for it, but every single person I’ve talked to separates the world of Harry Potter from her. It basically has a life of its own and they couldn’t care less about JKR now, that’s what I’ve been able to surmise of people’s view of it now. It’s like having racist parents but not being labeled as one because you’re a separate entity.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 9 months ago

I'm a big gamer, and was a massive HP fan. I did not buy the game, or even consider it, specifically because of JKR's bullshit.

I may be in the minority, but I guarantee I'm not the only one in this boat. So now you've talked to someone who cares, if you count this as talking.

And just to say a little more, no I didn't crusade against the game, nor do I villainize people who bought it and enjoyed it. I do think it's possible to enjoy art without liking the artist. Hell, my favorite book series of all time is the Ender's Game series, and Orson Scott Card is probably just as bad as JKR, though maybe not quite as famous/public about it.

But I can't bring myself to buy it. I'm trans, and her rhetoric, and how public it is, has been specifically harmful to me, directly. But that's just me. I won't tell other people how to live their lives or enjoy their free time, so long as they're not actively hurting others. And no, I don't consider buying a game where one person who is profiting from it might spend a sliver of that profit on anti-trans BS to be actively harming others, especially when she already has enough money to do whatever the hell she wants anyways.

This doesn't make a dent, and ethical consumption under capitalism is impossible anyways. I just hope that some portion of people who bought the game heard about the protests and maybe donated a fraction of what they paid for the game to some pro-LGBTQ groups. I have to believe there's at least a handful of people like that. I do believe that people are mostly good, and want to do good.

Yeesh, I wrote a lot more than I planned to here. I'll stop now lol.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Death of the author only applies if she's dead.

So unless there's been some good news in the last day, those people are just coping

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (4 children)

(Thought experiment time) So at what point, if ever, does a universe separate from its creator? Think about Star Wars. There have been a large number of derivative works by multiple authors. However if George Lucas came out against gays and trans people, would you taint the entire franchise? At what point are the two separated, if ever?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (5 children)

This happens a lot more than you think. It isn't just coping.

How many movies were produced by Weinstein? How many comics were published by bigots that still re-sell in droves today?

How many celebrated tv shows were made by pieces of garbage?

Wrestlemania season is here. THAT company is completely vile from the ground up.

Sometimes, people just pick and choose their fiction and legitimately separate the artist from the art. The Harry Potter franchise has outgrown it's original author, just like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, WWE or almost any franchise.

If you think the world truly is so black and white, you haven't gone out and experienced enough of it.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It happens every time. Pokémon Sword/Shield and Scarlett/Violet had the biggest launch in the franchise's history despite being (justifiably so) heavily criticized by pretty much everyone online.

People shit on microtransactions and always-online games but the top charts always show online multiplayer games are among the most played.

It doesn't make the criticisms any less valid; it just means that the general public is usually ignorant of them.

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