Are Mobile Games Canon? Jam City President Josh Yguado Talks “Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery”

Excitement for the upcoming release of Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery continues to build this spring! Josh Yguado, the cofounder, president, and COO of the game’s developer, Jam City, recently spoke to online video game magazine Hardcore Gamer about the game.

Yguado described the game’s design and user experience.

Hogwarts Mystery has a really interesting game design – it’s a combination of storytelling with RPG elements. You get to live the life of a student experiencing Hogwarts for the first time. You get dropped in, you create your avatar, you start taking classes. As the narrative starts to unfold, you have to make decisions that affect the outcome of the story, and you have to make friends, build up attributes. Those attributes and spells you learn will help you when you have to duel, play Quidditch, solve problems in the game, and hopefully solve the Hogwarts mystery.

Yguado also stated that the game will continue to grow and evolve after its initial release.

It’s more like a television show than a film. We’re going to be releasing content on a regular basis. There will be new stories, new chapters, new characters that you’re constantly being introduced to. It will be an evolving property that we think is going to last for years and years.

Like most mobile games, Hogwarts Mystery will feature in-app purchases, but Yguado assured that the free version of the game would still have a lot of great content.

We believe all content should be available to everyone if they pay or not. We really want to make this game accessible to everyone.

Yguado also spoke of the game’s complicated relationship to canon, maintaining an ambiguous stance.

I’m hesitant to definitively say whether it is or isn’t cannon, but all parties are involved in the writing, and it fits well in Harry Potter and the wizarding world. Nothing conflicts with the story you know. We’re really excited to have people try it and see what they think.

We still don’t have an exact release date, but the game is set to be released this spring. We can’t wait to try it out!