The problem for Wired’s video-game reviewer is that the creator of the Harry Potter franchise is public enemy No. 1 for transgender activists.
“Yikes, y’all,” begins today’s Wired review of the new Hogwarts Legacy video game. “I don’t even smoke and I feel like I need a cigarette before I get this thing started.” Who knew writing video-game reviews was such an emotionally exhausting endeavor?
Of course, the review itself, as is typical of this sort of self-important social-justice crusade, isn’t really about the new Harry Potter video game in question. As the author, Jaina Gray — whose previous contributions to Wired pontificate upon the ever-important topics of “The Best Vibrators For Everyone (Yes, Even Men)” and “7 Great Valentine’s Day Deals on Vibrators and Suction Toys” — notes in the opening paragraph: “We’re here to talk about Hogwarts Legacy, and to do that we need to discuss the whole mess. Pull up a chair, pour yourself some tea, wrap yourself in a blanket, scream into a pillow (or the abyss), because this one’s gonna take a lot out of both of us. (Or get heavy.)” Generally speaking, opening paragraphs such as this one serve as a handy injunction to discount much of what follows.
Gray makes it very clear from the start that this review has very little to do with the content of Hogwarts Legacy — or, at least, that the reviewer’s critical assessment of the video game was baked into the cake before the game itself was even released.
The real problem, of course, is that the creator of the Harry Potter franchise, J. K. Rowling, has become public enemy No. 1 for transgender activists, given Rowling’s firm public criticism of the idea that men can become women — a view that Gray, who is transgender, absurdly characterizes as questioning “whether or not we should exist.” The evidence Gray provides for that claim is a hyperlink to a video of Senator James Lankford (R., Okla.) quoting Rowling while criticizing the Equality Act on the Senate floor: “She wrote, ‘all I’m asking — all I want — is for similar empathy, similar understanding, to be extended to the many millions of women whose sole crime is wanting their concerns to be heard without receiving threats or abuse,” Lankford says. Close listeners might have difficulty discerning the “transgender people shouldn’t exist” part.
But, in any event, since Rowling has “always been inseparable from her work and from work that she’s inspired (and licensed),” Gray argues, “nothing with a Wizarding World stamp on it can be viewed outside the context of it being a product of Dame J. K. Rowling, CH, OBE.” From there, the review launches into a long, completely unrelated autobiographical account of the author’s relationship to the Harry Potter franchise, which leaves the reader with even more reason to believe that this has very little to do with Hogwarts Legacy.
When we finally get to the game itself, the criticisms are incoherent. The storyline is “rooted in anti-Semitism,” we’re told, because it involves a global “cabal” that’s “trying to end slavery.” (Apparently, being anti-slavery is an anti-Semitic trope now). Very few details are ventured — instead, readers are treated to self-serving prose about how the author feels playing the video game, which has no obvious relation to whether others might like or dislike it.
We then zoom back out to another completely unrelated section (of what has become, at this point, an exhaustingly long piece) titled “Standing Together”: “In the yawning emptiness at the heart of Hogwarts Legacy I see the quiet solidarity of queer people and our allies in game development,” Gray writes. “I probably won’t ever know your names. But you know who you are — I see you, and I appreciate you more than words can ever express.” Powerful stuff. Also, still completely unrelated to the video game in question.
I’m not a video-game guy, but it’s worth noting that players who are presumably motivated by an interest in the game — its gameplay, graphics, storyline, and so on — rather than by unresolved personal grievances, have given Hogwarts Legacy high marks. On Metacritic, the average of a total of 1022 user reviews is nine out of ten.
Gray’s monologue isn’t motivated by the nature or content of Hogwarts Legacy: “There’s a hole where this game’s heart should be. You can’t see it at first. You have to really feel around its edges, stop looking for what is there and start noticing what isn’t.” It’s an apt way to put it. Noticing things that aren’t there are precisely what this author and her genre of writing are all about.