The Escapist & Hogwarts Legacy: Money, Magic, and Influence
Out of the Armchair and Off the Fence
Let me start by saying this was prompted in part by statements made by Nick Calandra (Editor-in-Chief of Escapist Magazine) but I’m writing this article in good faith to further articulate my issue with The Escapist and their coverage of Hogwarts Legacy. Most of my writing experience comes from writing scripts for my videos on YouTube where I have full control over the pacing. Additionally, I prefer to lay out my points with a general disregard for the length of the work. I would have made this a video but it would’ve taken a few weeks between my jobs and classes. So if this article is poorly-paced and/or overly long, I do apologize.
Human bias is something that ultimately cannot be eliminated. How we talk about something and even how we choose to talk about it frames the information within a given perspective. There are topics and events that benefit from testimony and viewpoints, while others should indeed strive for a neutral and objective portrayal. In pop culture news, these publications act as a news source, a form of entertainment in itself, as well as a means of promotion. As someone who is a huge fan of The Escapist, their behavior regarding Hogwarts Legacy is one that has left me somewhat frustrated. I’d like to not only address the issues I have with their decisions, but provide some means of bettering the situation.
Pretext
For those unfamiliar, The Escpaist is an online publication whose most popular personality is Yahtzee Croshaw, creator of Zero Punctuation. Zero Punctuation is a video series where he reviews recent video game releases, reviews retro titles, and discusses events within the industry. In recent years, The Escapist has strived to provide a variety of content outside of gaming, such as their “In the Frame” series analyzing films and their “Adventure is Nigh” DND series.
Hogwarts Legacy is a video game from the Harry Potter/Wizarding World franchise. The creator, J.K. Rowling, has become such a problematic figure in recent years that to truly cover this in its entirety would require at least 2 hours of your time. As the franchise creator, she will benefit from the game’s financial success in the form of royalties.
The Escapist has announced that there will be a Zero Punctuation covering Hogwarts Legacy. In light of this, they published an article by a trans woman who said “don’t pay [J.K.] and don’t promote the game or talk about it online or offline.” The fundamental issue at hand is how much stock you should put into a trans team member’s advice and how a compromise can fall short of its intent.
As far as my own biases go, I’m a huge fan of The Escapist; I regularly listen to “In the Frame” and “Slightly Something Else” while I work. Everything I’m about to say criticizing The Escapist is because I believe they have the capacity to listen. If I didn’t care or felt they didn’t, I would just unsubscribe and move on as I have in the past with other gaming news outlets.
Harry Potter is a different story. I didn’t read any of the books growing up, I played the Lego game when it was gifted to me, and I saw the original films for the first time in 2019. I have no nostalgia or reverence for the property, but I do respect them as fiction that has caught on within pop culture.
As for the relevant social issues: I am a cis man who has lived his whole life in Indiana, where even being gay is seen as a mental illness by members of my immediate family. When trans swimmer Lia Thomas was gaining notoriety, a family member said “a good camp (conversion therapy) would fix those kinds of people.” I’ve heard LGBTQ friends and colleagues talk about their fear of coming out to their families, or the rejection they received once they did. I believe trans rights are human rights.
Chapter 1: Something in the Air?
My concerns began roughly two weeks ago. During their weekly live podcast, “Slightly Something Else” hosted by Yahtzee and Marty Sliva, someone said in a super chat, “We know Rowling is a massive bigot. Please don’t give Hogwarts Legacy the attention.”
In response, Yahtzee asked, “what if we got a review code?” Marty explained that “I think they’re less worried about the $60 and more worried about whether your review would cause more than $60 worth of purchases”
“What if I promised to stop the review every two minutes and say ‘incidentally, J.K. Rowling is a massive bigot’?” Yahzee continued, “I kind of have to review the game, it’s kind of my job…I mean obviously I’m going to mention the fuck out of it in the review, I’m probably going to get a great deal of mileage out of it”
He continued, “I will review in such a way that I make sure absolutely no one who hears forgets Rowling is a bigot for a moment. Ok? So while I am exposing the game I’m also exposing that they are a bigot so it evens out. How about that?”
When someone mentions pirating the game, Marty responds “if you don’t want to support them, just don’t play the game because…I’m gonna be honest guys, there’s a lot of games. There’s so many games you could play.”
Further into the podcast, when discussing indie titles, Yahzee says “This is a messaging problem, it comes from the AAA shit getting all the coverage.” He continues, in a less natural tone, “It’s a good thing that we here at The Escapist work diligently to put out regular reviews of games from all over the spectrum of budgets”
Now unless J.K. has Yahtzee at gunpoint then he does not have to review Hogwarts Legacy, and could alternatively spotlight indie titles that he claims The Escapist works diligently to cover. Also, Zero Punctuation is hardly concerned with the hottest new releases, as Yahzee has dedicated several episodes to retro reviews and laughing at an industry that never learns anything (tee hee hee).
Chapter 2: Behind the Curtain
In the interest of transparency, screenshots of all tweets and private messages will be provided at the very end of the article for those who wish to see the full context.
On February 10th, Escapist freelance writer Elise Avery did an amazing job detailing the controversy in detail. In it, she details how Rowling has used her money and influence to further her transphobic viewpoints both within the collective conscious as well as donating to anti-trans lawsuits.
She concludes with her recommendation in regard to buying or discussing the game, saying:
Promoting the game through streams, reviews, and positive online posts is obviously going to boost the profile of the Wizarding World, and that will in turn boost Rowling’s relevance. Buying the game will at least indirectly put money in Rowling’s pocket, possibly quite a lot of it.
If you feel you have to play it, I don’t care that much, but I also won’t give you the trans seal of approval. If you want my advice, don’t pay her and don’t promote the game or talk about it online or offline. Hogwarts Legacy is already getting plenty of attention and publicity, and it doesn’t need your help.
After the article was published, it was shared in a post on The Escapist’s YouTube channel:
Since we are doing a Zero Punctuation episode on Hogwart’s Legacy, we also wanted to take the time to write up an extensive explanation piece regarding the controversy surrounding JK Rowling. https://www.escapistmagazine.com/expl... It’s a really fantastic article that was written to be informative, and not an attack on anyone reading it. If you’re hoping to understand everything that’s going on, please give it a read.
This post, sharing an article where the author’s advice on Hogwarts Legacy is “don’t promote the game or talk about it online or offline” begins with confirmation that there will be a Zero Punctuation on that game. At best this leaves the impression of fundamentally contradicting viewpoints within The Escapist, at worst it leaves the impression that nobody at The Escapist really cared what Elise had to say.
I tweeted a screenshot of this post, mocking it.
“Our most popular reviewer will be covering this game, but here’s an article on why another person on our team thinks promoting this game in any way is bad.”
I like The Escapist, but sharing one of your articles about why a game is bad on your community tab does NOT cancel out your most popular reviewer covering that game. To me, this says that you don’t care about the opinions of your own team that much.
To my surprise Nick Calandra, The Escapist’s Editor-in-Cheif, replied to me:
This was discussed with our editors and the author of the piece who knows the ZP is going out.Maybe reach out before making assumptions on our behalf.
So I took Nick’s advice and sent him a DM on Twitter, asking for further detail on the mentioned discussion.
We as a whole team, freelancers included, discussed our coverage of Hogwarts internally and decided our approach would be to inform our audience about the controversy, do the ZP, raise money for charity, do SEO [search engine optimization] work and then beyond that it’s up to our team’s discretion on covering further, as we don’t follow normal release schedules for our content much anyways.
Elise was part of this, and I personally worked with her to commission and build the piece that she put out so that we could also link back to it to inform people on why this issue is important, while also having her provide her perspective since she is trans.
She was aware of the whole process as we went.
He continued,
We absolutely do care about the opinions of our team and went with a plan we agreed with, so your Tweets are pretty off-base and making bold assumptions.
I asked whose decision it was to pursue a Zero Punctuation of Hogwarts Legacy in the face of this mounting concern. Since Yahtzee had implied he may have gotten a review code, I asked if this was a pre-existing arrangement with the game’s developer or publisher.
We didn’t even get [a] review code, so no agreements with publisher or dev. Yahtzee reviews what he wants to review, simple as that.
He proceeded to ask if I would take down my tweet. I obliged, and asked him the question that lay at the core regarding my issue with how they have handled this whole situation.
Why there is going to be a ZP on the game considering that you, and presumably Yahtzee, know how parts of your audience feel about this issue as well as how it affects a trans woman on your team?
Nick answered,
Because we’re still a business and she’s understanding of that and knows as a team we’re in support of her. She’s working on SEO of the game herself along with others, so while she has her personal feelings about it, she knows what we’re about at The Escapist.
The community is also aware and has been discussed with within our own channels.
At this point, I said “fair enough” and thanked Nick for his time.
After a few days, I decided I wanted to share and discuss what he had to say. I told him and this was his response:
Go ahead, but I’m also going to make clear that this was a sketchy way to go about getting those answers from me as you did not make your intentions to write a story clear from the onset. Not thrilled about that.
So to give you an official answer, because now you are writing a story —
The Escapist’s stance on Hogwart’s Legacy is not to boycott the game, but to inform our audience of the controversy surrounding JK Rowling.
We, along with our writer, Elise Avery, who is trans, worked together on an article building a comprehensive timeline that informs readers on Rowling’s history with transphobic comments and actions.
The piece was received very well amongst our audience as many people knew of the controversy, but not the depth of it, and we as an editing team also learned a lot working with Elise on the article.
From there we launched a weeklong fundraiser to support Trans Lifeline and have so far raised over $6000 with our community.
Our intent going forward is to do a Zero Punctuation episode on Hogwart’s Legacy, SEO work, and then beyond that we have no further plans as we don’t work on the normal schedule that most other outlets do.
We communicated our plans with the team before moving forward, and have been diligent about moderating our community and keeping our team safe on social media.
Credit it where it’s due, I appreciate Nick allowing me to bug him with my concerns and questions, as well as allowing me to share our discussion publicly. I’d like to say I respect the stance made in the official statement; I believe that everyone should be allowed to make an informed choice, and simply saying “you can’t play this game because I said so” is hardly a compelling argument.
Additionally, I’m glad that this was discussed with the whole team. It’s nice to know that The Escapist isn’t just being guided by those who are in charge or most popular among viewers. I’m also not claiming that any member of The Escapist is secretly transphobic or too much of a Potterhead to listen to what Elise had to say. Nick has proved he's willing to stand up to transphobes going after Elise and her work, and that is something I cannot overstate my gratitude for.
My issues at this point are twofold: the decision to move forward with covering Hogwats Legacy because they’re “still a business,” and how they went about compensating for that decision.
Chapter 3: Shine a Brighter Light
Let’s not mince words: The Escapist does not have to cover Hogwarts Legacy. They will not be discredited by the industry nor will the company disintegrate overnight just because they did not talk about it. Even setting that aside for the time being, the plans laid out by Nick to seemingly counterbalance the Zero Punctuation video are flawed either by conception or execution.
inform our audience about the controversy,
Just so we’re clear: the article is good, I recommend you read the article. I think that cis people need to take trans women’s viewpoints on this issue seriously since we can’t approach it from a place of true empathy.
The only issue with the article is that its reach is limited by being in a single format with its sole location on its website. Even with a YouTube community post, I don’t believe this was made with Zero Punctuation viewers as the audience in mind. Even if the Zero Punctuation episode begins with a “read the article” message, it’s a losing battle for their casual audience who are there to watch a video or listen to Yahzee while they do something else. If they had made a video adapting the article similarly to “Beyond the Frame” it would have at least been digestible to their casual viewing/listening audience. As a digital publication, The Escapist should make the content meant to inform their audience as accessible as possible, and an effort in this regard would have at least been commendable.
raise money for charity,
Charity and fundraising are meant to be selfless acts. You can celebrate raising money for a good cause, but as soon as it becomes part of your plan to deflect criticism or somehow justify other actions, it’s no longer charity.
Additionally, the over $7,000 raised by the community for Trans Lifeline should clearly indicate where The Escapist’s active audience stands on J.K. Rowling and her transphobia.
I’d also like to point out that The Escapist “didn’t even get [a] review code” so either The Escapist or Yahtzee paid for the game in order to cover it. If Yahtzee bought it himself then that’s his choice. He could also use his money to cheat on his wife with hookers but that would also be his choice. If The Escapist paid for it then they have given more money to Rowling than they have to their own fundraiser. And no, Darren Mooney’s donation doesn’t count for everyone.
do SEO work,
Basing this purely off of Elise’s other articles, there’s nothing in articles like “when does this game take place?” that will significantly compel those on the fence about the game to purchase it. In fact, I think Elise openly bragging about writing these articles “as a way for Rowling to pay me back for her transphobia” is great. If the video traffic and attention are the primary motivations for covering Hogwarts Legacy then it would be excellent to see all of the profits go to Trans Lifeline or Elise herself, including Zero Punctuation. Yahtzee’s video is going to further Rowling’s reputation and likely boost her bank account, so they might as well make an earnest attempt to counterbalance the effects. The Escapist keeps the traffic and engagement, and trans people receive support from The Escapist thanks to Rowling’s works and influence.
beyond that it’s up to our team’s discretion on covering further, as we don’t follow normal release schedules for our content much anyways.
Giving the rest of the team free reign when it comes to covering the game means that they effectively have the right to disregard Elise’s advice because of her article and the fundraiser. The Zero Punctuation on the game and any subsequent Escapist coverage that further boosts the profile and finance of a bigot are somehow meant to be counterbalanced by raising money for a week and commissioning an article from a trans woman.
Elise was part of this
She was aware of the whole process as we went.
We absolutely do care about the opinions of our team and went with a plan we agreed with
Nick mentions Elise’s behavior on this situation internally, as though it changes what she has said publicly contrasting with what The Escapist is doing. It doesn’t. Based on her stance in the article and her place at The Escapist as a freelance writer, I’m going to make the bold assumption that she voiced her concerns, there was pushback by other members of the team, and what Nick has laid out in our exchange was the resulting compromise. I don’t believe the plan “cover the game but write an article and do a fundraiser” enthusiastically got Elise’s “trans seal of approval.” Either she compromised because that’s the best she was going to get given her position, or her article that Nick “worked with her to commission and build” did not accurately reflect her views on the matter when she said, “don’t pay her and don’t promote the game or talk about it online or offline.”
Now let’s talk business.
Chapter 4: “It’s not binary.” -Steve Wozniak (played by Seth Rogen)
When Nick said “Because we’re still a business” I felt like the pushing I had done to engage with him sincerely on this issue had hit a brick wall. What’s the counter-argument to “we have to make money”? As Yahtzee said, “bitches gotta make they money somehow.” I considered what Nick said over the following days, and over time I found this motivation regarding a single game to be at best misguided.
Imagine any scandal within the games industry taking advantage of consumers or employees; misleading trailers, microtransactions, workplace crunch, you name it. Now picture the CEO excusing their actions by saying “we’re a business.” That would not go down well.
I don’t want to label this decision as greedy, but what kind of alternative position would they be in where they must follow the decision that indicates the most beneficial outcome from a business standpoint? There’s no way out of it whatsoever. The best I could pose is one where The Escapist needs to do this in order to survive. It’s as though they simply had no choice; it was either cover Hogwarts Legacy or file for bankruptcy. Except there’s no external indication that The Escapist is struggling.
For starters:
Second, their number of Patrons is the highest it’s been since its launch. If that isn’t enough, I’m sure sponsored live streams are helping. From the outset, there’s no reason to believe that The Escapist is in any kind of desperate financial crisis.
When it comes to The Escapist, I have it on good authority that at least this business is run by people. Those people make decisions based on their viewpoints. You can’t just say “the business made us do it” as though there are no people giving their input and ultimately making these choices. If there is a belief that a Zero Punctuation of Hogwarts Legacy was just “that essential” for the stability of The Escapist then they’re either kidding themselves or The Escapist is secretly hanging on by a thread.
You can be a business and still have a hard stance on human rights issues. J.K. Rowling thinks trans women should not exist, and has aligned herself with those who believe trans women need to be eliminated. If, in the interest of business, The Escapist was knowingly covering a game that benefits someone who is publicly donating to advocates of Jim Crow laws or racists, that would be very hard to smooth over with a compromise or discussion. No amount of fundraising or POC team members agreeing with the plan would allow that to be easily justified, especially if those team members have explicitly advised against covering it.
Chapter 5: Suggestions and Conclusion
I’m going to make the very bold assumption that Nick didn’t just read part of this article, say “oh fuck you” under his breath, and close out of it. If that’s the case, I want to express again that the issues I have with this situation are not beyond saving. My ideas might be the hippy-dippy utopian product of an art student who makes YouTube videos, but hear me out:
- I’m going to guess that simply NOT posting a ZerPun on HogLeg is not going to happen, but you can’t say I didn’t ask. When it comes to trans issues: listen to the trans woman on your team. The choice as to whether or not you cover Hogwarts Legacy is one that directly affects her and other trans women. To go against her advice is to tell her as well as everyone who agreed with her article that you don’t care. A site that covers gaming should know better than most what it means to be any kind of “apolitical.” (*cough* Ubisoft *cough*)
- Adapt Elise’s article for video and put it onto YouTube and The Escapist website. Bonus points if you make it the featured video/channel trailer and pin a link to it on The Escapist’s Twitter.
- Donate the ad revenue earned by the adaptation of Else’s article AND the Zero Punctuation of Hogwarts Legacy to Trans Lifeline, so that any attention the video receives will be directly translated into money that would benefit trans people. A fundraiser where you give people the option to donate to charity or give you a super chat is nice and all, but put your money (not your community’s) where your mouth is.
- I shouldn’t have to join a Discord server or DM the Editor-in-Cheif to get a better understanding as to how decisions on contentious topics like this came to be and where members of The Escapist stand on it. I think a live discussion with some key members would be a step in the right direction in regard to transparency on subjects like this. If nothing else, it would clearly communicate a more united front on these decisions.
I know I’ve said a lot of unkind things and probably made some bold (and what may prove to be incorrect) assumptions, but hopefully these are at least considered.
I like The Escapist, it’s one of the few media/news outlets I frequently watch, listen to, and read. I respect that they will cover what they find interesting rather than just what’s relevant, and I enjoy the dynamics between the personalities often featured in videos and streams. Beyond that, I’m glad they did make an effort to take a stance in support of trans rights. At the end of the day, I’ll probably still follow them and I would certainly work with them if they ever offered. None of what I said is meant to be a damnation of them as a whole, these are just legitimate concerns I have about their recent decisions.
Ethics in the modern video games industry just plain sucks. Indie darlings can become NFT shills, a AAA game about valuing your time can crunch its developers due to ambitious scale, and just owning a console means you can’t sue when it’s broken. I don’t expect The Escapist to get it right every time, but I hope they at least listen when people pose concerns.
If I can end this like an episode of Zero Punctuation: if you keep sitting on the fence, eventually you’re gonna get fucked by it.
Also, please look into who the sales of Atomic Heart stand to benefit before covering it further. My family is from Ukraine and I would be happy to consult.
TRANS WITCHES ARE WITCHES
Below are the original tweets between myself and Nick Calandra
Below is my full conversation with Nick Calandra
