![]() What the media fail to mention is that we have seen this all before: a loose alliance of like-minded social media users who channel their hatred for a woman in the entertainment industry into an online harassment campaign and boycotts of her video game. Strangely enough, Vogueemerged as one of the only publications to decry the death and rape threats directed against Rowling. Meanwhile, transgender activists keep harassing Rowling and online streamers who play Hogwarts Legacy on Twitch. Other reviewers felt compelled to issue tortured apologies in advance of reviewing the game (“I’m a bisexual woman, and I have a big ol’ Harry Potter tattoo next to an anti-TERF tattoo,” proclaimed an Engadget writer). Wired scored the game a 1 out of 10, calling it “as heartless as its creator.” Vice’s gaming vertical, Waypoint, last mentioned Hogwarts Legacy almost a year ago, as if covering the game could summon Voldemort. Liberal tech sites have either condemned Hogwarts Legacy or tiptoed around its existence. The new Harry Potter-themed adventure game is the biggest video game of 2023, despite a vociferous boycott by pro-transgender activists and progressive-leaning gaming journalists incensed about what they imagine is Rowling’s “transphobia.” This, in any case, is one way to look at the raucous culture-war battle currently being waged in 2023 over author J.K. The idiosyncratic controversy that first galvanized the internet in 2014 is a live service culture war that never dies. So naturally, Gamergate-video games’ marquee scandal-works in much the same way. Half of millennials and Gen-Zers are glued to them for at least eight hours a week, and predatory “microtransactions” in popular live service games are now a $67 billion industry. Indeed, the internet-at-large’s attention economy operates in the same fashion, but games manage to hook their users with ruthless efficiency. ![]() Programmers keep updating titles like Fortnite, Call of Duty, and League of Legends in perpetuity to addict their players-extracting their money and data along the way. That’s a clumsy industry term classifying games with no proper ending. ![]() ![]() In video games, the “live service game” is ascendant. ![]()
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