Lead Artist of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” PC Game Shares Development Secrets in YouTube Interview

 An exciting part of the Harry Potter series has always been the video games based on Harry’s story. In total, there have been 14 console games that go along with the franchise. The very first of these games was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001), published by Electronic Arts and developed for Windows by KnowWonder.

Recently, a YouTuber by the username of Flandrew sat down with Christo Vuchetich, the lead artist for the game. The interview is almost 15 minutes long and features some exciting information regarding the game’s development.

The first thing Vuchetich discussed was the amount of legal work that went into the game. His company, KnowWonder, was working with EA, which worked with Warner Bros., which worked with J.K. Rowling’s representatives. They had to go through three levels of executives to ensure their actions were in line with what was expected of the Harry Potter games.

One of the challenges Vuchetich and his team faced was figuring out what Harry could do at Hogwarts. In the game, he is a first-year student, so there aren’t a lot of things open to Harry at Hogwarts. To make the game more exciting, the developers added puzzles and secrets that players could find. This would ensure that the game was more than just a walking simulator.

We had so much fun making those games. We got to go in and [do] the bean bonus room and these secret tunnels that you could go through. [..] You’d go off into these challenges, and the team, particularly the level designers, we’re just searching left, right, and center for where we could put secrets.

A fan favorite from the game is the Knockback Jinx (Flipendo), which never appears in the books or films. When asked, Vuchetich mentioned that J.K. Rowling gave them the idea for it. They were given a list of five spells and basic definitions of what they could do. That way, the team could develop them to work with the games.

Interestingly, this PC game was in development at the same time that the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone film was in production. According to Vuchetich, they had no access to the production and had to go into the design of Hogwarts without visuals. When they were finally given photos from the set, every image was too blurry to use. So the team asked again to see the set. The game’s creative director was permitted to take a notebook onto the set to document the visuals. That notebook was all they had to design the game.

Something Flandrew wanted to know was who the people in the paintings around Hogwarts are. The answer to that might surprise you. The creative team was tasked with finding famous paintings and Photoshopping themselves into them. This allowed them to get by copyright laws since the photos were changed enough from the originals. Every painting around Hogwarts is a picture of a team member Photoshopped into a famous painting.

This version of the game was one of five being developed at the time. Vuchetich mentioned that while they had some of the same concept art as the team working on the PlayStation adaptation, they did not work closely. The PC version was designed for kids, while the PlayStation one was considered to have a wider audience. However, both versions were met with mixed reviews from critics.

Were there any parts of the interview that shocked you? Was there anything else you wanted to know about the development? Let us know in the comments below, and be sure to check out Flandrew’s page for his interview with Vuchetich about the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban PC games.