Kim Salzer, former VP of global brand management for Activision and director of product marketing for EA, spoke about the project that got away, the game she worked on but was never released: Harry Potter, the MMO, in a recent Twitch interview.
According to Linkedin, Salzer worked at EA as director of product marketing from 2000 to 2003, during which time the first two Harry Potter films were released and Pottermania exploded. In retrospect, the notion that Harry Potter, a cultural force that continues to suffocate us now, would burn out in “a year or two” seemed stupidly naive. Maybe it was just a case of wishful thinking.
“We did all the research,” Salzer says, “we had the beta built out. It was a combination offline and online experience where we’d mail stuff to the kids, like prizes and ribbons and stuff like that. [It was] thoroughly researched, very confident in the success of this.
But it was killed, for lack of a better term, because EA was going through some changes at that time and they just didn’t know or believe enough that IP would have a shelf-life longer than a year or two.”
Avalanche Software is now working on Hogwarts Legacy, an open-world RPG set in the late 1800s that will be released in 2022. You’ll be able to create your witch or wizard and play through an original story not created by J. K. Rowling, according to reports.
The Witchcraft and Wizardry Minecraft mod, which is a complete RPG developed in Minecraft that allows you to learn magic and explore Hogwarts, is a better alternative for something you can play right now.
