We also recognised that this would be the first time anyone would be able to really get a look at Hogwarts, so trawling the books and referencing JK Rowling’s own notes about the layout of Hogwarts we did our utmost to replicate a correct version of the castle – Floor 1: Transfiguration, Floor 2: Charms, Floor 3: Defence Against the Dark Arts (with the tapestry on Floor 3 that conceals a shortcut with a slide in the middle of it down to Floor 2), and so on – these details from the books are correct and a great deal of work was done by both the design and world building teams to reconcile visuals based on those of the motion picture with the Hogwarts as it is described in the books. The intention was to spring the important events of the story on the player at the times that they least expected it so that they like Harry are truly surprised when while wandering the corridors of Hogwarts at night they find themselves walking past the second floor to find Nearly Headless Nick petrified by a Basilisk. The trick then was weaving in the storyline of the books into the game in such a way that the player was not merely going through the motions, replicating every twist and turn of the books by rote. After some thought, I proposed the idea of splitting the game up into ‘Days’ and ‘Nights’ – giving the player a list of tasks to do to complete in the daytime (such as going to Defence Against the Dark Arts to gain a spell) and secret missions (such as sneaking out to the library at night). Early brainstorming sessions and direction meetings identified both the need to ‘learn spells at Hogwarts in a fun and challenging way’ (the words ‘class’ and ‘lesson’ were frowned upon as they imply the sort of things you don’t want to do in a game) as well as being able to ‘sneak out at night’ in order to get involved in the kind of adventures that make the books so appealing. The majority of the design work was done internally at Electronic Arts with regular brainstorming sessions and meetings at Eurocom to keep everyone updated and discuss all the issues you would imagine arising from developing different levels at two different sites and across three different formats.įrom the design perspective, taking Harry to the ‘Next Generation’ meant doing our utmost to create a believable version of Hogwarts and incorporating as much of ‘The Fiction’ as possible.
In order to create the vast amount of graphics and animations required, development of these titles was split between EA’s own internal team, working on PlayStation 2 and an external team at Eurocom in Derby, UK working on GameCube and Xbox. Taking two years to develop work on these titles began at the same time as work on the Philosopher’s Stone titles commenced, with the aim of these more sophisticated titles being released on the same day as the second Harry Potter movie. The second Harry Potter book ‘Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets’ was the first to be translated into video game form for the then ‘Next Generation formats’ of PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube and Microsoft Xbox.
Lead Design ( Sony PlayStation 2, Nintendo Game Cube, Microsoft Xbox)
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