Harry Potter Collector's Edition art revealed

[Azatotht]

Jersey Jack just revealed the art for Harry Potter Collector's Edition on Facebook.

On June 5, the spell will be cast.

Thanks to Knapparcade for the heads up, you can also see the video there.

Harry Potter Collector's Edition sideart

Harry Potter left sideart

Harry Potter backglass

[cait001]

Fuck JKR. What an awful human being.

[mrmikeman]

Fuck JKR. What an awful human being.

Yes she is. What does that have to do with this thread? Just because someone enjoys the HP “world” doesn’t mean they are assholes.

[cait001]

I don't think you're an asshole, Mike. You're awesome!
I'm sure the game will be great, and the art looks lovely.
It is a shame that a portion of the licensing fees goes to fund anti-LGBTQ efforts.

[mrmikeman]

I hate that it gets associated with the original artist. The story itself is about demonstrating how intolerance and bigotry is wrong. Yet the creator is an intolerant homophobe herself.

She’s already been paid no matter what. I hope JJP has a hit. They’ve been hitting below par lately.

[semicolin]

That’s not entirely accurate, Mike.

Licensing normally works on a royalty basis, per sale of machine. The more sales, the more royalties. In this case, a significant portion of each new game purchased can definitely be shown to fund real world organizations that actively lobby to harm trans people — people in the pinball community. People who are our neighbours, our friends, and our family. The royalty system means that the money wouldn’t be going to hurt people if the machine wasn’t purchased in the first place.

Nobody’s saying you’re an asshole, Mike. Cait explicitly called out JKR for her bigotry and said nothing at all about the people who like the Harry Potter stories. Your response was defending yourself against a claim that Cait didn’t make, and it shows that you might have already spent some time thinking about this issue. Good on you for that, but it’s definitely worth a little more time to consider how the choices we make affect the real world.

When people *know* that their support of the HP universe with their money means that some percentage of that money will go to supporting bigotry against their family and their friends, they’re making it clear that their love of a fictional story is more important than the actual real people in their lives.

Does knowing that and still deciding to throw money at a fictional story over real people make people assholes? You can decide.

Once upon a time I loved the silly wizard stories too, but I love my family and my friends more. I choose them first. There are lots of amazing pinball games and movies made by wonderful creative people that aren’t going to use proceeds from their purchases to cast the Obliviate spell on real people.

What’s more important? A wizard game or real life people? You can pick either one, just don’t act shocked when they’re disappointed that you chose a game about a fictional wizard kid over them.

[mrmikeman]

Not trying to start a holy war here. There's enough polarizing attitudes in politics I can't believe we, as a society, are now applying to arts as well. You know, the old "if you aren't with us then you are against us". It's not about supporting fiends and family OR the HP fiction. Most people understand that and can do both to a certain degree. If we can't separate art from the artist then might as well go ahead and close all museums in the world. Most artist ARE assholes or fringe/offensive thinkers.

And on the royalty thing. I understand how it works. I do not believe it applies in the pinball world as the productions are so small (in relative terms to let's say a video game). This explains why JJP had to pony up anywhere between 4-10 million for the rights. She already pocketed her millions is what I was getting at. She is making a hell of a lot more from merchandising and theme parks. The JJP deal is likely pocket change for her. In any case the whole world knows what kind of person she is. It's much more alarming to see what's happening south of our border than in the fictional world of a bigot artist.

[semicolin]

Mike, I'm going to ask you, as a friend, not to put the rights of my family and close friends as merely the product of polarizing political attitudes. They're real people; let's not lose sight of that.

There's no separating the art from the artist here. The artist uses proceeds of the sale of that art to harm real people.

It's one thing to enjoy the art; but what people are saying when they buy that art is that they like the art enough to give money to the artist to also punch someone in the face because of who that person is. So... is enjoying some silly wizard story worth punching someone you know in the face? Would saying yes bother you on an ethical level? Should it?

Let's forget pinball. I need a new car. I have a choice between a Ford, a Hyundai, and a Kia. I've loved Ford vehicles all of my life, and that's the one I want... but if I found out that $50 from the sale of every Ford went directly to lobbying the government to cut off the thumbs of people of Irish descent, I might have a hard time showing off that cool new car to my Irish friends. If one of those Irish friends came up to me before I'd taken delivery and said "you know, they're going to use your money to cut off my thumbs" I think I'd have a hard time replying to them with "Hey! It has absolutely nothing to do with my beautiful cool Ford. No need to make this political!"

Anyway, if you're curious about how game licensing works, Roger Sharpe (yes, *that* Roger Sharpe) breaks it down pretty well here: https://pavlovpinball.com/pinball-licen ... ry-potter/

[semicolin]

Back on topic with the thread: someone did an analysis of the game’s art and it turns out to be some pretty heinously bad AI generated slop: https://tiltforums.com/t/jjp-harry-pott ... lysis/9662

Imagine dropping $15K on it and receiving this. Yikes. Jersey Jack seems to be displaying over and over again that all they care about is turning customers over and shaking the quarters out of their pockets.

[mrmikeman]

I love how someone makes an assumption and then it takes off getting repeated as fact. It’s an opinion from a known JJP hater. I’d take his opinion with a grain of salt. We know why you hate the game though and it has nothing to do with the art. You’re allowed to dislike it. Just be honest. No need to make up stuff or repeat opinions as facts.

BTW if it’s a game you would never be associated with…. Why are you lurking in the Pinside hype thread??

[dos.reboot]

Fuck JKR. And fuck JJP.

[semicolin]

BTW if it’s a game you would never be associated with…. Why are you lurking in the Pinside hype thread??

This is MAACA, a discussion forum for pinball and arcade enthusiasts. I am an enthusiast, and I’m going to discuss things I’m enthusiastic about on it.

Also, implying I’m dishonest because I linked to someone’s analysis of the art, in a thread *about the art?* Mike, come on. That’s beyond the pale. There’s no need to attack other MAACA users like that.

There’s no doubt about the use of generative AI here: the images bear all the hallmarks. It doesn’t require a trained eye. It looks bad.

[mrmikeman]

I didn't mean to sound confrontational. Seriously. Pretty much everyone I know don't go scouring threads of games that have absolutely no appeal to them - what's the point? I don't like Venom, UXM, JW, and many others. why would I spend time on those threads since the games don't appeal to me. If it's interesting to you then sure I guess it can be entertaining. But then you come here in this forum and attacking the game with the unproven speculations/accusations of that other forum, insinuating that anyone that buys the game is pretty much a dumbass: "Imagine dropping $15K on it and receiving this. Yikes." It's just odd. It seems to be a post COVID thing to approach everything in such a negative way and it's not just you. Oh and BTW it's not 15k but 25k for canucks lol.

I get the JKR hate. I really do. There are also many that just hate JJP too. I don't personally care about JJP any more than Stern or any other manufacturer. I've owned a WOZ and it was ok but not mind blowing by any means. I think my SD is way more fun/immersive than WOZ ever was. Gameplay (shots/feel) is what I care about. I don't look at art when I'm playing, regardless of who made the game. I look at flashing inserts and listen for audio cues. I look for fist pumping "moments" of having completed something. WOZ pretty much only had 1(Destroy the witch). JAWS has many. Metallica/Labyrinth not so much but they are fun in a different way (satisfaction on STARTING certain modes). HP apparently has pretty much no "moments" right now. However the code is only 2/3 complete. Who knows what they will come up with to make it more "fun". Maybe nothing lol. JJP has that attitude of quantity over substance.

So my point was that of course it's interesting to discuss issues. I don't think that making the statement you did encourages discussion. How about something like: "Hey there's been talk that JJP has been using AI to develop their artwork. Have you seen it? (include a pic or 2 like the dragon) What do y'all think?". THAT is the start of a discussion. BTW quite a few of the "AI" examples are pretty much EXACT renditions of movie stills and seemingly not AI artifacts. Expecting an artist to be 100% photo accurate is not realistic by any means. That's what photoshop is for but then people hate photoshopped art. The dragon is bad/weird though. I am guessing the artist was incapable of drawing a decent dragon and they likely went AI tool on that one. Keep in mind those computer assistance tools have been around since way before the "AI" label was created. It's not a new thing.

I really mean it when I say I'm not trying to be confrontational. Typing behind a keyboard doesn't convey body language and tone. Hope you are coming to the museum opening on the weekend so we can have a beer and chill.

[cait001]

I am specifically annoyed that Jack is apparently claiming all the art is hand drawn, when the AI artifacts are glaring. At the very least I hope he comes clean about it. Turning the number '2' on Ron's vest into a vestigial part of the broom is wild!

I love pinball and I'm sure HP will be just as good as all of the other jjp machines (I enjoy all of them tbh).
Let's not forget that the current golden age of pinball was preceded by a number of years of less-than- forthcoming failures, and I do not want to see a return to an era where manufacturers lie to our faces.

[mrmikeman]

Hand drawn is not entirely true regardless. They use digital tablets.

I know for sure that Multimorphic's Portal artist (Brad Albright) still does it by hand. ON CANVAS!

[semicolin]

Yeah it’s probably not controversial to say that the multimorphic folks are way cooler in every possible way than JJP.

[mrmikeman]

Yeah it’s probably not controversial to say that the multimorphic folks are way cooler in every possible way than JJP.

They are - but get no love from pinheads. It's too "different" lol. MM staff are all super geeks - in a good way.

I think the P3 is cool and most modules are super fun. None that I'd consider my fave of my lineup but all good enough to stay long term. It's the variety and ease of switching that's appealing.

It's also not controversial to state the JJP games are pretty with lots of bling but code is usually sub par. Wondering if JJP will make some sort of statement about the HP art. Apparently the artist (if real) has pretty much zero presence anywhere online. Kind of suspect for an artist. I think the "controversy" needs more traction on sites other than pinball forums to get the attention of JJP/WB.

[mdeslaur]

Oh wow, that AI art is...something.

And here I thought the King Kong Pro backglass with a 10-pack instead of pecs was weird.

[mrmikeman]

I'm holding judgement until we see ACTUAL art from production machines. My guess is these display samples (a.k.a. prototypes) were likely done by AI to get production going while art was still being developed/finalized. There's already a picture of real CE art that shows the dragon is in fact drawn correctly. I hope it's all the art that's correct but if it's not. Meh. I don't look at art while I play and even when I don't play lol.

[cait001]

I get confused when people harp on Stern for their animations because I never have time to look up during a game