Hogwarts Legacy - Not as good as Dog Kid University

[Flub]

I doubt she's kept even the most basic of tabs on it.

[Strafe]

Disagree. As previously mentioned, she’s quite keen on royalty payments so I expect she has tabs on it, preorder numbers and all.

 

Unless I’m using advanced search wrong, she’s never mentioned the game on Twitter. Which, from a fiscal point of view at least, is sensible. 

[Festoon]

43 minutes ago, Strafe said:

The gender selection options were revealed in March last year - quite loudly in news terms - and I can’t imagine she doesn’t know nearly a year later as it’s her IP and you’d, reasonably, expect a creator to keep at least cursory tabs on it.

 

I would be surprised if there wasn’t some contractual clause preventing her from generating negative publicity over the game at risk of forgoing profits. I think she’ll keep her mouth shut.

 

There's not a fucking chance Rowling has any idea.

[Strafe]

10 minutes ago, Festoon said:

 

There's not a fucking chance Rowling has any idea.

 

There definitely is a chance. I mean, she has a computer and I read about it on a computer.

 

On a less literal note I’d be surprised that you’d think someone both a) protective of their IP and b) really interested in royalty payments wouldn’t be keeping tabs.

[Festoon]

7 minutes ago, Strafe said:

 

There definitely is a chance. I mean, she has a computer and I read about it on a computer.

 

On a less literal note I’d be surprised that you’d think someone both a) protective of their IP and b) really interested in royalty payments wouldn’t be keeping tabs.

 

Well, it's an unknown.

 

Based upon her anti-trans stance in every other area, I'm figuring she doesn't.

 

She's standing shoulder to shoulder with people screaming about brainwashing kids with a 'trans agenda' but is a-ok with male physicality and female voice in a game attached to her property.

 

Doubt it.

 

We'll see soon, in any case.

[Strafe]

3 minutes ago, Festoon said:

 

Well, it's an unknown.

 

Based upon her anti-trans stance in every other area, I'm figuring she doesn't.

 

She's standing shoulder to shoulder with people screaming about brainwashing kids with a 'trans agenda' but is a-ok with male physicality and female voice in a game attached to her property.

 

Doubt it.

 

We'll see soon, in any case.

Theorised this above.

I doubt she’s a-ok with it but she likes money more. In much the same way Ben Affleck undoubtedly thought* that Justice League was terrible he didn’t disclose this publicly because encouraging people not to give him money isn’t great business sense.

 

*knew

[Unofficial Who]

It could be either.

 

She might not know in which case it will probably kick off the moment someone posts a trans or non-binary character in game screenshot or video. Or she might know and be waiting for that moment to make it an issue.

 

OR (and probably more likely)

 

She knows and she's pragmatic enough to let it slide because she knows at a good proportion of her fans will follow her social media and she can reach out to them that way.

[Gabe]

I would've thought that if she didn't know directly then some of her TERF horrors would've flagged it to her.

[Rex Grossman]

I think people are overestimating 

a) the importance of this game to her finances/empire

b) how big a deal the character creation thing is

 

For point b, she’d probably consider the idea of say, a character who looks male but with a female voice a laughable bit of wish-fulfilment role play. Rather than someone sticking it to her. If she thinks about this feature at all she’ll probably think it proves her point - that being trans isn’t a thing. It’s just people pretending. 

 

[Gabe]

I don't think anybody thinks she cares about the money she'll get from this, do they? I've said a few times her accountant is probably the only person that will actually see any figures.

 

I think you're - sadly - probably right with point b though. 

[Zael]

I try not to look at this boycott in terms of how it will affect JKR. Because even in dreamland where the boycott is wildly successful and the game bombs and the narrative is that it bombed because of her persecution of trans people, it's not going to affect her at all. She'll still be rich, she'll still have her views. It's a dumb video game that didn't sell, oh well.

 

Instead I look at how that dreamland scenario would impact the trans people in my life. And man would it make them feel supported, loved and accepted. 

[MK-1601]

12 hours ago, Mallet said:

I don't think that is hypocritical. 

 

Its when people judge people who don't join the crusade they champion while they themselves ignore other, equally worthy, causes. 

 

Its the people who will label anyone who buys this a bad person for supporting shitty people, all the while tweeting from their fucking iPhone. 

This thread really needs to go through all these asinine whataboutery 'arguments' in the first post so dimbos don't keep drive-by reposting them every few pages.

 

...

 

"I think Saudi Arabia is definitely worse on trans persecution than JK Rowling is."

 

Rowling (as a private individual) is using their public profile and vast fortune to lobby for rolling back human rights in relatively progressive countries. The corporate beneficiaries of her IP (Warner and Bloomsbury) know that eventually her name will be about as commercially viable as Bill Cosby's, they're trying to pump as much cash out as they can while there's still a halo effect of non-academic adults with young children for a few more years. The worse the PR fallout, the quicker they call time on the franchise and the less damage Rowling can do as someone who is ostensibly culturally 'relevant'. Pictures of her palling around with her new neo-nazi mates can currently be splashed on the front of the Times, Telegraph and Mail with gushing praise. It SHOULD be socially unacceptable to buy into that.

 

It's harder to boycott Saudi investment in games because it's so widespread, however it can be made toxic from a PR perspective for companies. I wouldn't buy anything from SNK (where PIF have a controlling stake, or close to it) until they change owners. If the Saudi royal family made moves to significantly increase their stake in Nintendo, EA, etc., that should be an ongoing PR headache for them. Sadly I don't think the specialist press is equipped to do real journalism about this and the mainstream press don't care about games enough.

[Strafe]

I’ll sidestep the Saudi bit because I’ve explained the point I was making there several times now to ‘dimbos’ who kept missing it.

 

However, I am probably in the dark about JK Rowling’s lobbying. I’ve only seen Twitter rants and a biological female only refuge set up in Scotland (I think). What does the lobbying extend to?

[Unofficial Who]

50 minutes ago, Strafe said:

I’ll sidestep the Saudi bit because I’ve explained the point I was making there several times now to ‘dimbos’ who kept missing it.

 

However, I am probably in the dark about JK Rowling’s lobbying. I’ve only seen Twitter rants and a biological female only refuge set up in Scotland (I think). What does the lobbying extend to?

 

I've dug pretty hard to find something that covers all the allegations made by the trans and nb community from a viewpoint that is neutral or at least somewhat biased in her favour. It gives you at least an idea why the trans / nb community might have some grievances

 

https://www.glamour.com/story/a-complete-breakdown-of-the-jk-rowling-transgender-comments-controversy

 

 

Quote

Harry Potter series author J.K. Rowling came under fire in early June 2020 for controversial tweets she posted about the transgender community. Her stance has caused fans and stars of the wizarding world like Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, and Eddie Redmayne to speak out against the author. Here’s everything you need to know:

.

Politico has a less up to date and less sympathetic take (although they don't pull any punches in pointing out the unacceptable threats of violence made against Rowling) https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/03/the-metamorphosis-of-j-k-rowling-00043835

 

Quote

On Twitter, however, it’s hard to escape the impression that Rowling is having a lot of fun. In 2015, she called the social media platform an “unmixed blessing, trolls included,” and there are few signs that sentiment has changed.

That might be because her side seems to be winning. Bindel described the fallout from Rowling’s essay as a watershed moment. “The tide has turned because now regular people with no engagement in feminism, or trans politics, or gender identity or any other kind, are now recognizing that this is a mob of bullies,” said Bindel. Rowling’s intervention, Robertson agreed, “caused one of the larger tipping points.”

In Scotland, Rowling’s essay was part of a wave of political pushback that forced the Scottish government to spend another couple of years shoring up (and watering down) its legislation on gender self-identification. The bill was published in March and remains the subject of heated debate.

 

[Festoon]

Er, she teamed up with a fucking loon who I last saw screaming about the fact that a children's alien character didn't have a clear gender - presumably a pink bow Ms. Pac-Man stylee was in order.

 

Her pals are fucking nutters - as Bindel says above, are obsessed with 'winning' - winning what, against the existence of transgender people? Absolute lunatics all.

 

You can judge a person by who they hang around with and a bunch of her mates are right-wing weirdos who are gradually edging into gender stereotypes and homophopia.

 

Edit: Here, I should explain my thinking here. The 'winning' stuff is essentially harkening for a world where things are plain, black and white, all confusion removed. None of this 'woman in a man's body' stuff, for example. That idea of a clean, clear, sterile world is basically a fascist idea - it's completely impossible, people = complication.

 

That's the idea that led to the Nazi concentration camps, to trying to breed 'nativism' out of children in Australia and Canada, this notion of keeping things clean and clear. 

 

I have no doubt that these morons don't realise that, though.

[Rex Grossman]

7 hours ago, Zael said:

I try not to look at this boycott in terms of how it will affect JKR. Because even in dreamland where the boycott is wildly successful and the game bombs and the narrative is that it bombed because of her persecution of trans people, it's not going to affect her at all. She'll still be rich, she'll still have her views. It's a dumb video game that didn't sell, oh well.

 

Instead I look at how that dreamland scenario would impact the trans people in my life. And man would it make them feel supported, loved and accepted. 

 

Oh, don't get me wrong, I didn't say what I said to give the impression that boycotting the game is pointless. It isn't. 

There are plenty of things that are The Right Thing To Do from a moral perspective that are simply small personal decisions. Someone turning vegan isn't changing factory farming but they will know they've done their bit to not make the world worse.

[scottcr]

Gotta feel for Mark Hamill accidentally liking a JKR dump on tweet when he meant to like the tweet she was dumping on. RIP his mentions.

[ulala]

56 minutes ago, scottcr said:

Gotta feel for Mark Hamill accidentally liking a JKR dump on tweet when he meant to like the tweet she was dumping on. RIP his mentions.

 

It was quite the blunder though, and too a while for Mark to explain.

 

If you like awful tweets by JKR, is it not right that you get some shit?

[Thor]

That's all too easy to do on twitter with those nested fucking tweets.

[ulala]

14 minutes ago, Thor said:

That's all too easy to do on twitter with those nested fucking tweets.

 

true, that's why you have to take care

 

its easy to unlike something you have done by mistake, you err unlike it.

 

[Mallet]

8 hours ago, MK-1601 said:

This thread really needs to go through all these asinine whataboutery 'arguments' in the first post so dimbos don't keep drive-by reposting them every few pages.

 

...

 

"I think Saudi Arabia is definitely worse on trans persecution than JK Rowling is."

 

Rowling (as a private individual) is using their public profile and vast fortune to lobby for rolling back human rights in relatively progressive countries. The corporate beneficiaries of her IP (Warner and Bloomsbury) know that eventually her name will be about as commercially viable as Bill Cosby's, they're trying to pump as much cash out as they can while there's still a halo effect of non-academic adults with young children for a few more years. The worse the PR fallout, the quicker they call time on the franchise and the less damage Rowling can do as someone who is ostensibly culturally 'relevant'. Pictures of her palling around with her new neo-nazi mates can currently be splashed on the front of the Times, Telegraph and Mail with gushing praise. It SHOULD be socially unacceptable to buy into that.

 

It's harder to boycott Saudi investment in games because it's so widespread, however it can be made toxic from a PR perspective for companies. I wouldn't buy anything from SNK (where PIF have a controlling stake, or close to it) until they change owners. If the Saudi royal family made moves to significantly increase their stake in Nintendo, EA, etc., that should be an ongoing PR headache for them. Sadly I don't think the specialist press is equipped to do real journalism about this and the mainstream press don't care about games enough.

And this is exactly why companies continue to get away with it. It should be socially unacceptable to be seen with a fucking iphone as well if people truly stood for what they believed in. Instead people queued up to buy the next  iphone in their millions including, I'm willing to bet, some of the people in this thread.

 

"awwh it's too hard for me to do anything about those people, it's a company"

 

"You can't expect me to actually put real effort into standing up for my morals"

 

"just let me boycott this 1 individual so I can feel like I'm really doing something and look good to my friends online"

 

Do you know what J.K Rowling is? She is low hanging fruit and the only effort you have to put into this is to boycott a game most people probably weren't going to buy in the first place and post a few tweets! You make your posts then go back to browsing your iphones or playing your Nintendo games which directly enriches the Saudi government who believe gay people should be thrown off the top of a fucking building.

 

What this thread, and others like it, needs is for people to take a long hard look at themselves and ask themselves if they actually want to have change rather than reposting a few fucking hash tags or boycotting a single game, which a lot of the people boycotting say looks shit anyway. If you want to have real change it will take real effort and sacrifice. Not a few fucking tweets

 

I would genuinely  fucking love to see what reaction there would be if Rowling had been an investor in Elden Ring or in Tears of the Kingdom. Would there be near as many people calling for boycotts and saying they wouldn't buy the game on this forum? I would bet good money there wouldn't be near as much uproar. Because missing out on those games would mean missing out on genuine masterpieces wouldn't it?

 

We couldn't ask people to go that far for their morals could we? 

 

Maybe I'm extremely cynical in my advancing years but what life has taught me is that for 99% of people their morality ends when their inconvenience begins. As long as they aren't too put out by it, as long as they don't have to give up something they really want then they are all smiles and placard waving but the minute they hit a bump in the road supporting their morals?

 

Suddenly the excuses come out, an individual is different that a company etc, etc. You do all realize that Rowling is a multi billionaire right? She most likely has an investment tree rivalling the Saudis and some of these companies and you are most likely supporting her by buying all sorts of different products.

 

No doubt another smart  ass person will repost that stupid "but we live in a society" meme as an excuse for why they aren't willing to put real effort into standing up for their morals. Yes boycotting Saudi Arabi would be much harder than boycotting J.K Rowling but you you could fucking do it if you really wanted to, if you put the effort into researching and finding alternatives you may not be able to 100% boycott them but you could significantly reduce your monetary support of them.

 

Of course 1 of the first steps would be giving up Nintendo but I don't think many of the people in here are willing to give up Mario and Zelda to support their trans friends. Oh I know you will in the future, if the Saudis increase their investment, if Nintendo starts making shit games, if I don't have too put too much effort into it. If the Sun revolves around the Earth then I'll boycott Nintendo.

 

 

[bradigor]

I for one don't have an iPhone myself I don't buy games from Ubisoft, Activision and various indies who developers I feel are in that category. I have missed out on many games I would love to play and have to fight my ADHD driven FOMO to do that. I don't buy or read the S*n and campaign against it when possible, etc 

 

You have to choose a stand that works for you as well. Your own mental health is important. The JKR thing directing impacts me and people I care about and that is the most pressing thing to me right now. 

 

I would love to give the same attention and energy to all the wrongs in the world, but that is simply not possible. I am dealing with going blind, learning I have had autism undiagnosed all my life, struggling to survive the right side of poverty whilst trying to give me kids a decent and fun life. 

 

You can't tell people that because they support A in this way, they must then do the same for B C D and E otherwise put is less valid or hypocritical. 

[ulala]

7 minutes ago, bradigor said:

You can't tell people that because they support A in this way, they must then do the same for B C D and E otherwise put is less valid or hypocritical. 

 

Its whataboutism

[Hexx]

It takes a bold man to post a very very long rant about why he won't even bother going for the "low hanging fruit" but is still better than that does that (and he presumes hypocritically only that, and unless they do EVERYTHING it's invalid) just to show off to their friends. (Sincerity is obviously not something considers)

 

Just call everyone VIRTURE SIGNALLING WOKE SJWS! and be done with it

 

 

 

People that want to buy this game guilt/judgment free as losing their fucking minds

[Rex Grossman]

I think the point that @Mallet was clumsily making is that too many people are happy to make tiny sacrifices but will weasel out of making the big sacrifices.

[Gabe]

15 minutes ago, ulala said:

 

Its whataboutism

There is certainly a lot of that and @bradigor articulates quite well why. But I suppose an illustration of @Mallet's point is Elon Musk - we have a large thread mainly decrying him being a terrible person with a lot of power and reach, with stories of various abuse and doesn't he also have anti-trans views or at least supported some very unpleasant stuff?

 

There has been chatter (and at least one thread in A&F) about not engaging with twitter because of him and his practices since he bought it (and twitter being a cesspit generally) and yet people continue to embed tweets all the time and engage with it. 

 

Now twitter is losing money so you could argue you aren't enriching Musk (though that is something of a cop-out) but it perhaps is an example of something that causes harm and yet people carry on regardless.

 

I suppose this could be classed as whataboutism too, though it isn't intended to point to any hypocrisy in those positions, more the realities of how we make our choices. 

 

[PaB]

19 minutes ago, Rex Grossman said:

I think the point that @Mallet was clumsily making is that too many people are happy to make tiny sacrifices but will weasel out of making the big sacrifices.

That’s doesn’t make the personal choice to make small sacrifices any less valid. 
 

 

[Floyd]

15 hours ago, Strafe said:

 

There definitely is a chance. I mean, she has a computer and I read about it on a computer.

 

On a less literal note I’d be surprised that you’d think someone both a) protective of their IP and b) really interested in royalty payments wouldn’t be keeping tabs.

 

If she doesn't have an idea, then there's certainly someone around her will. I'm sure her accountant is on top of it!

[PaB]

2 hours ago, ulala said:

 

It was quite the blunder though, and too a while for Mark to explain.

 

If you like awful tweets by JKR, is it not right that you get some shit?

Depends if you base your opinion on his politics and views on trans issues on his entire life and posting history , or, liking a tweet.

[Opinionated Ham Scarecrow]

"Make more games NOW dobby you cunt. Look at these numbers. Those fucking edgelord gamer nerds love me..."