gAmeDHD

And it’s time some of you learned about it.

By Colin Clark

Content Warning: transphobia, self harm, general bigotry

Allies are so, so willing to abandon their support at the drop of a hat, or the slightest inconvenience. They scream “what, you want me to not have liked Harry Potter as a child?” No, we’re not asking you to retroactively not have liked something when you were a child. We’re asking you to now stop liking something that actively supports things and ways that harm us. This is going to be long, and this is going to be arduous. But nobody ever said being an ally is easy. Stick with me here, the gaming is coming.

This is so simple, it’s boggling my mind that I feel the need to make an entire post about it. But the western world is completely unhinged right now in ways it has only dreamed of being. I’m going to get one thing off my freshly shaven chest right now: I do not consider myself trans. I am non-binary and to some trans people – and some cis people – that makes me trans. Fine, that’s all well and good, but I don’t claim that mantle myself. My sister is trans, and that should be where my family’s, and y’all’s support remains. This piece is for her. As for me, I’m just a silly little gremlin. However, I do come from a place of fear here and now in writing this article. A fear approaching, but not quite as intense as the fear trans folx live with every single day. It is a fear that is deep, and visceral, and is making me physically nauseated as I write this. I’ve been stoking a new fire inside myself to stop shoving down my hatred of gender inside my id. To really let that fire blossom and rage and burn out the gender I was assigned. I am learning to and wanting to do everything in my power to dismiss any one particular gender. I want to have no gender and all genders. I am and always have been no gender and all genders. I am all powerful, is what I’m getting at. That’s easy to accept, right? I’m kidding, relax. The issue lies in expressing all that chaos and flame physically.

I’m inserting a length here that gives context to my following criticism of games media surrounding Hogwarts Legacy. If you dont need that conext, please skip to the following ~~~~~~~s below.

My wonderful spouse recently took a journey with me to a few clothing stores to revamp my wardrobe, in particular for work, and particularly with the idea of finding clothes that didn’t always make me look so godforsakenly masc like the way I was godforsakenly born/assigned/increasingly begrudgingly accepted. I now have most of a wardrobe that helps me feel more fem in the way I dress. This balances out the fact that from the neck up I look like an evil oil baron from the 1800s. I recently shaved off my beard and shaved my pits and my chest and got my head as bald as was possible. I do have a very long, very unhinged handlebar mustache, so I’m trying to balance that out with more feminine clothing. Because, god dammit, if my head doesn’t look like a caricature of a Tom of Finland piece I dont know how else to characterize it. Yeesh.

This journey is scary and was scary not just for me, but for my spouse as well. The looks of both confusion and hatred we received from a group of men – at a western store as I asked the wonderful female employee as to where I could find a selection of blouses and/or skirts – was terrifying for both of us. I’ve seen that look before. I’ve gotten that look when I did something as a kid that wasn’t manly enough. The sissyfication of my being during my youth is something I tried desperately to take out back and shoot when I was very young. But I recognized those looks. It was the look that said “I’m gonna kick your knees out from under you in the field later at recess.” I know that fucking look. So we wrapped it up there, grabbed one shirt-dress, and I kind of made a point to act along the lines of “my f*ggot money spends just as good as yours, buddy.” And then we went to a safer – but still not actually safe – store instead. I live in the midwest and I was desperate on time. This is all a long way to say I’m attempting to feel comfortable in my own skin, as that skin is not the gender I was assigned at birth, (let it be duly noted again that genital bits don’t define gender) because my gender doesn’t actually exist. I can’t even figure myself out, ok? And that can be terrifying.

I only subject you to all of that about-me-garbage to give context to what follows.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~transrights~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The UK ruled this week that only women born with female genitalia and assigned female at birth are considered women. You can read an article here, and even watch a gaggle of hateful, bigoted women swarm their parliament with disgusting signs targeting – and advocating for the harm of – trans women. And trans folx in general, lest we forget the oft forgotten trans man. Obvious trigger warning for the aforementioned article.

I’m using this time, and this new law to once again champion the platform that trans women are women, because it will never be said enough. And we’re going to take a deep look at one particular issue inside of that. I swear, we’re getting to the gaming part that you’re ostensibly here for. When Hogwarts Legacy was announced and then released, trans and enby folx begged cis people to not support, buy, or play the game. We told them under no uncertain terms – and the monster JK Rowling herself said in no uncertain terms – that purchasing and even pirating that game gave money, credence, and acceptance to a platform of anti-trans bigotry.

Some games media outlets took what they viewed as “the high road” by putting out statements saying, basically “we won’t be covering, reviewing, or even making guides for this game because we don’t want to touch the issue.” They thought – and still think – that that is what cobstitutes allyship. That would be hillariously bogus if it wasnt so scary. I hoped we wouldn’t have to spell it out, but at the time we did. These outlets and these supposed allies thought that even reviewing it and giving it a negative score lead some attention and validation to the game’s very existence. We wanted them to review the game and we wanted them to give it a negative review. We’ll talk about and give examples of both sides of that idea. I want to give, here, a special shout out to Jaina Rodriguez Grey who now writes for Vice, but at the time was writing for Wired. She took the exact approach we hoped folx would take. She spoke out about the game’s inherent antisemitism and anti-trans bigotry. Thank you Ms. Grey. We’ll get to that review in a bit.

The review that needs to be talked about first and foremost is Travis Northup’s review for IGN. I’m not going to link to it. I don’t want that here, nor do I want to be the reason more traffic is driven to that drivel. I’m also not going to bury the lead here: Travis – or the powers that be at IGN – decided to give this game a 9/10 at the time, saying “In almost every way, this is the Harry Potter game I’ve always wanted to play.” Which, also, fine. Glad you got that, Travis. Except in actually reading the review that follows, this lede doesn’t hold water, as Travis doesn’t really have much positive to say about the experience. Everything that could be understandably misconstrued as positive is a stretch, and is immediately followed by a negative sentiment. Take for example:

“If you’re like me, you’ll roll your eyes during moments when you’re introduced to 100 years’ worth of dead characters lecturing you from paintings about the importance of some stuff that happened a long time ago and how you have to save the world or whatever. But once that’s over with[sic] Legacy mostly redeems itself with a fantastic cast of non-painting characters that help boil things down into a not-too-convoluted good-guys-versus-bad-guys conflict that ends up being an enjoyable tale, even if it’s not particularly profound or original.”

That, to me, does not scream 9/10. Travis spends the entirety of the review opining on things that just weren’t quite right with the game. Combat that is gripping, but with enemies that soon “wear thin pretty quick [sic].” Side quests described as “‘go here and kill/collect this thing, errands that do little more than burn some time.” Character progression that is never “particularly game-changing stuff.” And performance issues wherein “framerate [sic] inconsistency, weird issues where the lighting switches from too dark to too bright, aggressive pop-in while moving around the map quickly, and more. There’s even this weird thing where every door in Hogwarts has a brief loading screen.” I’m not even taking these quotes out of context. If I had read this review without knowing the final score, I would’ve guessed a 7/10 at best. But no. Travis has awarded this game of not-veiled-at-all antisemitism a 9/10 despite his entire review of gripes. I looked into Mr. Northup. He has 193 reviews registered on OpenCritic with an average score of 74, yet decided to give Legacy a 9/10. Travis is a cis-het white guy who chooses to have a major affectation that he’s the guy who is always wearing a tie. That’s who IGN decided was going to write this review – and many others. I’ll let you take from that what you will. And here’s why:

Herein lies a problem we see inside the review cycle. Outlets need to have advanced copies of these zeitgeist games in order to – when the embargoes lift – provide immediate reviews and guides on their sites. Guides in particular are what drive the majority of clicks to these websites, and players are going to want those guides day one. In order to receive these advanced copies, IGN – say – has to have a working positive relationship with – say – Warner Brothers and Portkey Games. In order to have a positive working relationship, Warner Brothers – say – more than prefers that IGN give the game a positive review upon release. If you catch my drift. And a 7/10 does not a positive review make. Travis, and his superiors, have decided to fully back and support JK and Warner Brothers in their bigotry crusade. Let me again remind you that JK Rowling has said herself that buying and supporting this game directly aids her in using her platform to harm trans women in the legislature and in the media and culture. But IGN needs those clicks, baby, so that IGN can get those ad views, baby, so that IGN can impress the shareholders at News Corporation, their conglomerate owner, baby. That’s just how this works. I’m not here to explain Capitalism to you, babyyyy. Let alone the inter workings of corporate games media. Yet here we are.

IGN has inserted two short paragraphs pertaining to the “sour taste” JK Rowling has left in people’s mouths, in which they claim that “As critics, our job is to answer the question of whether or not we find Hogwarts Legacy to be fun to play and why; whether it’s ethical to play is a separate but still very important question.” Positing that a critic’s job is to answer whether or not a game is fun to play or not is unbelievably reductive, childish, and, quite frankly incorrect. That’s like saying they review games the same way someone would review a refrigerator: in that it works or doesn’t work. Unbelievable. But bless IGN, they’ve left it up to us to judge the game in a way “that it can be weighted according to [our] own values.” Again: unbelievable.

I know you can’t get guides from small independent online sources. But you can get your reviews there. I hope you can see the direct line of harm that supporting this game entails. Do something better with your time. May I suggest you seek out and read games media written by trans folx instead? You wont have to look hard. Because let me tell you, the games-media-sphere is chockablock full of queer folx. If you really look into who is on the ground writing the articles and who is in the trenches developing the games… it’s queer folx. “So why then isn’t there more queer representation in games themselves?” I hear you posit. Because we are not traditionally the ones making the big overarching decisions. We are here doing the real work writing about and creating the pieces of work you love and choose to spend your precious time with. Do yourself and your games community a favor and go donate to a trans or queer charity, and play games made by trans and queer people. They’re not hard to find.

Here’s where I’m going to point you towards Jaina Rodriguez Grey again and her incredible review of Hogwarts Legacy. Rodriguez is a much better writer than me (obviously) or anyone else I’ve talked about here. She writes extremely cogently on what the game means to the queer community, and to her specifically as a trans woman. She writes a thank you to the developer for giving her the tools to let go of the Harry Potter world forever. If you’re still actually having trouble rationalizing dropping your love of HP, even after reading this whole piece (thank you), but you still want to be convinced, she will convince you. You owe it to yourself to read this review either way. We here on gAmeDHD are going to spend our time not championing games of hatred piloted by bigots. And I have a feeling writers like Rodriguez, and like a few of my favorites, Willa Rowe, Robin Bea, and Lexi Luddy will continue in the same fashion. Please. Spend your time listening to and reading pieces from trans and queer voices inside this often more-than-problematic industry. You can help make a change in gaming and in your own mind and in your own community. You can be a force for us queer folx. We would love that. We protect us, but you can too.

I’m going to tell you again that we are asking you in no uncertain terms to stop actively doing things that harm us. No one is telling you that you retroactively aren’t allowed to have liked Harry Potter as a child. We are telling you that it’s not okay to cobtinue to support it now. “That’s sucks!” I know! “It’s hard!” I know! I had to do it too! I loved Harry Potter in my youth. I spent many a night sitting at a table in the empty Subway I was managing in Colorado Springs (a city famous for it’s right-wing institutions like Focus on the Family and New Life Church) the summer after my senior year, raptly reading the final installment. No one can take that precious memory away from me or what Harry Potter meant for me as an 18-year-old who was very confused and very angry about their own being. But I don’t like or support the Harry Potter universe any more because supporting it actively harms my community, myself, my sister, and so so many others. It even harms cishet people because Rowling poisons the writing with hatred and bigotry. There are many things – particularly in gaming – that do the same kind of harm. So this is what we’re asking of you: Be conscientious about the media you are consuming and actively seek out queer voices in whatever it is you enjoy. That, and if you consider yourself an ally, put your money where your mouth is. The difference you can make, no matter how small, cannot be understated.

Bellow and following I have listed trans resources, communities, and games for your perusal. As a metaphorical diving board. Dive in and enjoy:

A few independent games journalism outlets with queer representation:
Checkpoint Gaming
Aftermath
Unwinnable
Start Menu

A few resources providing support for trans folx, and great places to put your money:
Trans Lifeline
Black Trans Advocacy Coalition
Sylvia Rivera Law Project
The Trevor Project

Games made by trans folx!
Bloodborne PSX
Celeste and Towerfall
Tell Me Why
Unsighted
Bomb Dolls
Punkcake Deluxe

Clothing!
Transfigure Print Co
Both & Appeal
The Phluid Project

Music!
Against Me!’s Laura Jane Grace
See You Space Cowboy
Grumpster
Gravy Train!!!
Ekko Astral

There are so many other ways to support queer and trans folx! Get out there, babyyyyyy!