'Half-Blood Prince' video game
'Half-Blood Prince' video game

Developers discuss challenges of creating 'Potter' video games

  March 18, 2009 at 1:59 PM ET
  Geri     HPANA (via Video Gamer)
  harry potter and the half-blood prince video game, half-blood prince video game, hbp video game


A new interview with the people behind the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince video game has appeared online. This interviewopens in new window delves into the challenges of creating the game, working with Warner Bros. and J.K. Rowling and more.

Executive producer Jonathan Bunney and the appropriately-named producer Darren Potter discuss the game.

VideoGamer.com: You've been working on this series for nine years now. What has been the biggest lesson you've learned during that time?

JB: That's a good question! I think there have been different things at different times. The penny dropped for us when we got to the Goblet of Fire game when we realised that our main reference had been the books, but for kids now the reference was the movies. At that point we took a half-way step to being closer to the movie, having previously done our own book-version thing. Order of the Phoenix was closer to the movie, and now this is as close as anyone's ever got to a movie, I think, in terms of getting the story, character and locations.

DP: On the gameplay side of things, we've learnt a lot about how to make things for children and how quickly they can pick things up. Again, it's a question of teaching. If you teach it the right way, it's amazing how quickly people can pick things up.

JB: I'm going to sound like a broken record, but we've just learned to embrace the fiction, and not feel that the only way you can make something fun is by having a platform adventure set in hidden caves beneath Hogwarts. Like I said, we probably wouldn't have had a potions-making game if we'd had just a random magical castle story.

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