Breaking a number of records, how hard did "Hogwarts Relics" work to restore IP?

The game "Hogwarts" adapted from the world-class IP Harry Potter is undoubtedly the first hit in the circle this year.

The open-world RPG game published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and developed by Avalanche Software has set a number of records in just a few days after its release: the number of online viewers on the overseas live streaming platform Twitch exceeded 1.3 million, and the number of simultaneous online players on the Steam platform exceeded 800,000.

After being on the Steam Top 10 best-selling list for several weeks, the game took the top four positions on the best-selling list last week (February 6-February 12).

Although the current evaluation trend of this game on the Internet is still a bit confusing, and its "exquisite can" open-world design has been criticized, the real sales and Steam store ratings are obviously not a perfunctory explanation of "fans to the game".

Hogwarts Relics was so successful.

Behind the success, it is inseparable from the experience and investment of film and television giant Warner in IP development, and the original author of the "Harry Potter" series and hundreds of millions of enthusiasts for nearly 20 years.

This is the triumph of "Harry Potter culture".

Warner Bros. Entertainment, The Wizarding World and Doorkey Games

Before the official release of Hogwarts, many people were hesitant to pre-order it. After all, a few hundred bucks are still expensive (298 RMB for the Steam Standard Edition, 338 RMB for the Deluxe Edition), and the studio responsible for developing the game, Avalanche Software, is not a well-known team, and they don't even have much experience developing triple-A games – but the quality of the final presentation of the game clearly exceeds the expectations of the studio's level of development.

It all starts with Warner Bros. Entertainment's layout of Harry Potter IP.

Wizarding World is an adaptation of J. Wizarding World by Warner Bros. Entertainment. K. Rowling created the Harry Potter novel series, and centered on the film series of cross-media production and co-fictional worlds.

You can understand it as a cultural brand with the "Harry Potter Universe" as the main body, and its creative products include but are not limited to the "Harry Potter" series of movies, the "Fantastic Beasts" series of movies, as well as major stage plays, theme parks, and so on. Since 2001, the exploration of Harry Potter IP development in the wizarding world has accumulated more than two decades of experience and fruitful results. These experiences and creative achievements provided a rich cultural soil for the content development of Hogwarts.

Portkey Games is a game brand established by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, specializing in the production of video games related to the wizarding world derived from "Harry Potter".

According to Wikipedia, Doorkey Games cooperated with Jam City in 2018 to develop Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mysteries, and later collaborated with Niantic, Zynga, NetEase and other game companies on several Harry Potter spin-offs.

After cooperating with several game giants and testing the waters in this field, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment finally officially opened its own exploration of the gamification of Harry Potter IP. At this point, Avalanche Software, the studio that developed Hogwarts' Relics, appeared.

Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment announced in January 2017 that it had acquired the studio (which had previously been owned by Disney and was responsible for developing Disney Infinity), but Disney canceled the project. Avalanche Software produced a spin-off game for the animated film Cars 3 that same year — perhaps doing pretty well, leading Warner to hand over Harry Potter IP's first true triple-A blockbuster to them.

To sum up, "Hogwarts Relics" has both the deep heritage of the cultural brand of the wizarding world and the blessing of many years of experience accumulated in doorkey games.

Where is the amazing move of the nobody, it is clearly a muscle show in the game industry by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, the "old rivers and lakes".

Immersive gaming? Interactive movies? A theme park close by

What about Hogwarts?

Playful.

From a game perspective alone, as many media and players say, Hogwarts is not a good game. However, it has a world-class IP like Harry Potter, and it is difficult for us to evaluate it purely from the game level.

In Gyro-kun's view, it may be more appropriate to think of it as a composite "cultural product".

After actually experiencing the game, a few keywords can summarize how it feels to me: slow-paced, immersive, cinematic.

It must be admitted that the most outstanding thing about "Hogwarts" is that it almost faithfully restores people's imagination of the wizarding world of Harry Potter.

The first is to recreate the worldview, scenes, creatures, and details of the history and humanity of wizarding in the Harry Potter universe. For example, the game 1:1 recreates the beautiful Hogwarts castle, the interesting and somewhat dangerous leprechaun bank "Gringotts", and various wonderful and spooky magical scenes.

Incredible environmental shaping

Magnificent interior architecture

Players can experience the warm and surprising daily life of the campus, carefully wave the wand (mouse or joystick) to learn spells, plant magical herbs, refine potions with various magical effects, complete homework assigned by the teacher, ride a broom and fly in the sky (of course, there is more than one means of transportation in the wizarding world)...

Slide the mouse to learn new spells

Fly, fly

The game not only contains a suspenseful main plot, but also a variety of elements such as collection, puzzle solving, and daily cultivation. You can be a Harry Potter-style hero here, or you can indulge in wizarding mini-games and interiors.

Ball games

Wave your wand for renovations

The game's use of mature camera language and a lot of cinematic cutscenes made me watch an exquisite Harry Potter stage play - and I am the person in the play.

This is not only the feeling of Gyro Jun alone, but the profound resonance of a large number of experience players at home and abroad.

The excellent thing about "Hogwarts Relics" is that it shows players a real wizarding world, which not only appropriately shapes the cultural atmosphere unique to Harry Potter IP, but also shows the thick sense and inheritance of this 20-year-old IP in detail.

When I saw the mild-mannered, red-haired Professor Weasley in the game, the kind, righteous and noisy Weasley family in the original book and the movie once again came to mind, as if meeting old friends I hadn't seen in years—they are fictional, of course, but so alive.

At this point, it's hard to say whether Hogwarts Legacy is an immersive game or an interactive movie. The boundary between the two carriers seems to be increasingly blurred, and the true power of cultural IP is revealed in it.

It's both true and fake, like a dream.

Game: A ticket to another world

As an IP that has been developed for 20 years, the wizarding world of Harry Potter has too rich connotations. It's not just J· The magical world created by K. Rowling is the crystallization of the cultural crystallization of years of hard work by official and folk enthusiasts.

Over the years, all kinds of novels, music, stage plays, film and television dramas and even theme parks have described to us that magnificent and colorful magical world. In a more fashionable way, it's like a "metaverse." And the game is obviously the most suitable comprehensive vehicle to show and the most accessible.

I'm ashamed to say that as a less senior "Ha fan", a wizard who has never registered for school, Gyro Jun has not been to Harry Potter's theme park in reality. The reason is simple, there was no money when I was a child, and I didn't have time when I grew up.

And that Hogwarts acceptance letter, which was 15 years overdue, finally flew into my hands today - not from an owl named Hideway, but from the game.

Be grateful for the times and technological advances, and praise the game.