In recent years, many books have been published on the topic of stories and memories of the development of certain video games. So in 2019, the book by Gaetan Boulanger about the behind-the-scenes creation of the first Harry Potter games was released in France. This book was quite voluminous (504 pages), telling about many things, from biographies to memories and facts.
We also remember this book in a «beautiful» font, which was inconvenient both for human reading (and the administration of our site did read this book), and for character recognition and subsequent translation by those readers who do not speak French. But overall, it was a great book, even considering the font :-).
In December 2025, another book was published in Russia. In Russian, with normal font, about all the main games and a volume of only 124 pages. We have read this book and would like to share our impressions with you.
Original book title: «Гарри Поттер и Дары геймдева» (ed. «Eksmo», December 2025).
So, let’s start with the fact that we mentioned Mr. Boulanger’s book for a reason: it is listed in the list of references and in the text «Gamedev Hallows» the facts from this book are well recognized.
In fact, the author has well reworked the facts from the book — most of them are compactly paraphrased, supplemented with information about Russian localization (in the original there were references to French localization, for example, where such a wonderful version of the translation for the Diffindo spell came from in the French localization of the Chamber of Secrets 🙂 ). It is also noticeable that third-party sources were used.
Well, for newer games, starting with the fourth, there is no particularly interesting information, which is honestly indicated. Well, for amateur games several paragraphs of text are allocated. That is, this part of the book is a set of game reviews.
Among the book’s shortcomings is the distortion of some facts. For example, it’s difficult to discern from the text when the first game for the PlayStation 2 and its siblings was released. Initially, the reader is given the hint that it was released alongside all the others, but then it turns out it was released in 2003. However, given the contradictory nature of some of the sources, it’s easy to become confused.
But it should also be noted that if you read and watch all the interviews given by game developers, you will notice that some facts change: maybe over the past years something has been forgotten, something has come up. Still, these games were more like «passable», there was little creative freedom, and routine is usually poorly remembered.
What conclusion can be drawn after reading this book and comparing it with Mr. Boulanger’s book and recordings of interviews with developers?
According to our editors, this is a good book: all the most significant facts about the first games are there, there are few distortions of information, and these distortions are not particularly significant, given that the official games reviewed were created with the aim of making additional profit after film screenings and then so that these games are forgotten, immediately after the end of their technical support in 2007 (all games before the Order of the Phoenix) and in 2013 (all games from EA).
PS. The administration of our site has not communicated with the author of the book, but says hello to him if he reads it 🙂