When I heard that the Harry Potter AR game was shutting down, my first thought was “oh yeah, there’s a Harry Potter AR game.” Despite Harry Potter’s cultural standing, Wizards Unite faded to obscurity within a year, and was finally axed in just over two. Meanwhile, Pokemon Go continues to grow stronger five years in. It feels like Harry Potter - like any game trying to copy Pokemon Go - never stood a chance.
I’m trans, and the very fact I have to say that highlights the toxicity around Harry Potter these days. I loved the books as a kid, and the films… well, I watched them without throwing rotten tomatoes at the screen, so that’s something. Thanks to the persistent anti-trans sentiment of creator JK Rowling (you can read all about the inaccuracies of her TERF Wars blog post here), the well feels poisoned.
I know lots of good people, and likely some trans people, worked on Wizards Unite. But I can’t shake the feeling that supporting anything Harry Potter-based, whether that be an AR game, a FunkoPop, or a ticket to the new Fantastic Beasts, is tantamount to showing support for her. Financially this doesn’t really matter to me - I have no idea how much royalties she gets from a Lego set, she’s rich already, and pretty much everything I buy gives money to horrible people one way or another. It’s more that it ensures she retains a platform - anything that keeps Harry Potter in popular culture keeps her relevant, and allows the anti-trans movement to have a mainstream figurehead.
Ricky Gervais and Dave Chappelle just tell transphobic jokes - they are picking an easy target for laughs. It’s Rowling alone, amongst the A-listers, who is prepared to actively join “team TERF,” and not just joke about it like Chappelle.
That’s the reason I avoided Wizards Unite, but I don’t believe that’s the reason it failed. They’re still making movies, plus a triple-A Harry Potter game is due to launch next year. The shelves are stuffed with all manner of Harry Potter merchandise for the holiday season. Harry Potter is still alive and TERFing. JK Rowling is not the reason Wizards Unite failed.
It’s a pretty sizable pink, white, and blue elephant in the room, especially with me behind the keyboard, but I think it’s a fairly minor factor, all things considered. Pokemon Go is an entity unto itself, and nothing can live up to it.
It’s not just because of Pokemon’s size as a brand. Harry Potter and Pokemon are both in the top ten for highest earning franchises ever, although admittedly Pokemon sits at the very top. It’s that Pokemon is so perfect for casual players, and the concept is so easy to understand. You walk around your neighbourhood and use your phone to catch a Pikachu. It’s an easy sell.
In Wizards Unite, you fought off weird monsters. This is a) not really what they do in Harry Potter, b) nowhere near as engaging as collecting a team of ‘mons, and c) much harder to sell when your gran doesn’t know what a Fuzzlewump is. I made that word up, but be honest, you weren’t sure, were you? Harry Potter creatures are less embedded in popular culture than Pokemon - even a Pokemon people haven’t heard of, like Sewaddle, is instantly endearing to look at. A Blast-Ended Skrewt will have less success here.
Harry Potter is not the only one trying to muscle in on Pokemon Go’s success. Since Harry Potter is in the same ballpark - albeit up in the nosebleeds - as Pokemon in terms of size, and since both games share a developer in Niantic, expectations for Wizards Unite were highest of the Pokemon Go competitors, but its retreat feels like a harbinger for the others in the ring. Yeah, there’s a ring in the ballpark now. WWE Pokemon Go will be here before the day is out.
The Witcher might feel as popular as Pokemon considering you can’t move more than five feet in the games industry without someone telling you The Witcher 3 is the greatest game ever, but it’s not. My wife is vaguely into games, and she could name all 151 original Pokemon and quite a few others. She has no idea who Geralt or Ciri is. She definitely wouldn’t know what a Bloedzuiger is. This doesn’t mean Monster Slayer, The Witcher’s AR game, will crash and burn, but it does mean it’ll never come close to PoGo’s heights.
Meanwhile, Pikmin Bloom has just launched, and with the right expectations it might do okay. It’s clearly far less culturally relevant than Pokemon, Harry Potter, or The Witcher, but it appeals to the collectathon nature that made PoGo a hit. It’s the right sort of game for AR, but is that enough when your demographic is ‘Pikmin fans’ versus Pokemon Go’s demographic of ‘anyone with a phone’?
Pokemon is the magic mix of popularity, casual appeal, and being perfectly suited to the wonder of AR. Hello Kitty, Winnie the Pooh, Star Wars, Disney Princesses, Mickey Mouse, Marvel, Mario, Anpanman… these are the other titans alongside Harry Potter and Pokemon in the list of highest-earning franchises. None of them could challenge Pokemon Go.
We also can’t avoid the fact that by being the first to do this sort of game well, Pokemon Go bottled a unique kind of magic. It also doomed every AR game that followed to be compared to it - just like I’m doing here.
Harry Potter: Wizards Unite’s closure is not a surprise, and despite Rowling’s past sentiments, I take no pleasure in it. But it only serves to highlight what a mega hit Pokemon Go is, and how special it is that a fairly simple collectathon AR game from five years ago is still virtually unchallenged in its genre. Those other AR games aren’t Pokemon Go - they never will be.