I’m asking what games deserve to be judged on their own merits. I have to ask—as a trans person—because this game is about me, I guess. I’m getting used to being a disclaimer, and that is at best what many games outlets are capable of mustering when writing about Hogwarts Legacy. I’m glad we’re suddenly all in on confronting that who makes a game, or at least the ideologies they carry in the real world, are important to criticism. It’s just ??? that associated billionaire transphobe is bad but Zionist writing that damn thing isn’t, ya know?
It's at best inconsistent. I would posture it has to do with association. If you are angry about Hogwarts Legacy, you’re probably transgender or love a transexual or are (dare I hope) allied with trans liberation. And maybe it’s just my first time truly getting to enjoy the games discourse repeat in full, but I must admit to you something (in hushed tones). I have also written about Hogwarts Legacy.
The first time I wrote about Hogwarts Legacy, I wrote about Cyberpunk 2077. You see, there’s a new AAA catastrophe that’s weird about trans people and also The Last of Us is relevant again. I wrote almost exactly two years ago: The failure of the extraordinary reveals the production of the ordinary. I meant: It’s ultimately always about whether it’s fun. When it isn’t, we can talk about it, which is why the same interrogation of material conditions during production of 2077 (a game that is not fun) is not demanded employed in criticism of The Witcher (a game that is fun).
What of this exigence, that Hogwarts Legacy is tainted by the material gain of its creator who professes a fascistic, colonial, and genocidal ideology? I think this is the cusp that makes Hogwarts Legacy discourse so ??? We now demand an antithesis to those who were always going to write “it’s fun” and all we got are disclaimers. A disclaimer can be a sort of killjoy, can it not? I’ve written that doing criticism as a trans person—occupying the title of trans critic—means being a sort of rhetorical killjoy figure. But you can’t synthesize a half-hearted admission, and the left is seemingly incapable of maintaining any conscious level of this sort of communal cognitive dissonance. Trans criticism and trans critics are then left out entirely by these half-measures unless we chose to take up the game ourselves (which trans criticism seems to necessarily preclude in this moment).
Before I continue, you may yourself feel the need to ask: Surely all the good crit on that other big game made by a terrible dude and thousands of his exploited workers was doing something good and interesting that made it worth engaging critically with? And yes, some of that crit was quite good. My point remains that you’re just choosing not to engage with Hogwarts Legacy for other reasons, namely its potential for fun and your own personal association with the cause of trans rights. This is a critical inconsistency that is apparent in The Discourse.
The second time I wrote about Hogwarts Legacy was more recent. My former outlet that I do freelance work for (and would be this morning, if y’all weren’t like this) has dedicated much coverage to this game and its controversies. Patrick Klepek described in a Tweet why a site like this one, even one with queer and trans staff at all levels of editorial coverage, would write about it. But that does not illustrate the inconsistency I am talking about as much as this does: It is the queer and trans staff themselves who are spearheading coverage. Coverage that either does not engage with or (worse) indulges in the controversy.
And I don’t know, dude. I’m just trying to save enough money to finally buy Kirby and the Forgotten Land and to be able buy Tears of the Kingdom to, if I’m lucky, write about, but my bike really needs a tune up and my glasses broke over the weekend. There were more police killings, continued occupation, new genocidal anti-trans laws introduced. And I just have to ask.