You know, what I normally support this kinda thing, this just reeks of "Self important tripe". Rockstar didn't want to make a serious game you nitwit, they wanted to make a fun game, and knew that by using a controversal setting and topic, it would sell well. Thats it.

People like this need to get over themselves and learn to F@$%ing enjoy the game. I'm getting tired of the whole debate as it is.

As far as I care, when the upcoming election is over,I'll be glad, cause that way, one way or the other, i won't need to hear this kinda thing anymore.

If the ESA and ECA would just get off there duffs and fight back as I suggested, then we wouldn't be where we are. THough the ECA is brand new and hasn't had time to get any type of action going, the ESA has had years and years to do something and hasn't bothered to do anything but play defense.

Well, no offense, but screw that, public backlash or not, we shouldn't be just talking about controversy, we should be fighting back. At least rockstar figured that out and is trying to lock JT in a cell.

Ian, get over yourself. Bully was not supposed to be a serious game. It was supposed to be a fun game. Rockstar manipulated JT, the media, and everyone who oppesed them into giving them free press and now bully is number 3 in sales nation wide and has sold over 500000 units.

Rockstar knew exactly what they were doing.

I do agree that Rockstar doesn't do themselves or the rest of the industry any favors by being so recluse. The one time they did say anything about anything (that I can recall) was their denial of Hot Coffee existing, which was an obvious lie (it was even exposed before they said this) and mistake.

It's bizarre, really. Originally when GTA started I thought they were just going to push things as far as possible to piss everyone off and go down in a blaze of glory if that's what it came to, but when you see how intelligent a lot of their satire is, that's obviously not the case. And yet they remain silent to the point of madness. Weirdos.

Sorry EXM, but I disagree on this case. Having played bully through, even gotten the special edition, I'm of the belief that it wasn't a social commentary, least not in the same manner that GTA was. I think it's more accurate to call it a personal commentary more then anything. It was rockstar trying to get people like JT to attack them, so when they were proven innocent, it was basicly a way to give there critics the FINGER!

Now, that being said, I'm not angry and Ian, but I feel his view is distorted. He tried to view everything through his "serious games" window and thats just not how things work.

Rockstar is, and has long been, masters of saitire, but saitire doesn't always exsist to be serious, much of it is designed soley for the purpose of humor. I think your treating bully as something it isn't. It's not a hyper violent "columbine simulator", as jt called it, but nor is it a Serious games contender like Ian seems to think it was.

Bully is, and was ment to be, a game that everyone can relate to. We all went to school, we all saw this kinda stuff. That why I think it's so funny. Cause it's a look back, at our past, not social commentary on our present.

Bullies have exsisted for years, and all these "anti bully" groups aren't helping. Hugs, being nice, that kinda crap? That doesn't stop bullies. I can tell you from personal experiance, a bully understands nothing quite like they understand courage. The last bully to mess with me met reality at the fronts of my knuckles, and he never bullied me, or anyone again.

While I don't condone violence, some times, showing bullies they aren't the Big dog is the only way to get them to back down. I proved it year after year in high school. Yet I never got in trouble, was never a problem student, and never did anything illegal.

Ian makes a great point about serious games. But bully wasn't meant to be one.

This reminds me of my collegiate music education.

There was "serious music" and popular music (top 40, show tunes, movie scores), which so often had to be dragged apart and evaluated on different scales. John Williams was not held to the same standard as John Cage, and frankly, wasn't deemed worthy of serious discussion.

The flaw there is invalidating the quality of the thing on its own merit, as opposed to evaluating the thing as proper example of X label.

We're getting to the point where games are branching into "high art" and "entertainment" (ie Shadow of Colossus / Madden 07), but only so by this forced pegging of labels. And even then, its a judge of tangible consumable content, rather then the meta-qualities of gameplay and effect of experience.

All that said, Bully's a fun and much appreciated experience, providing nostalgia for grade school proper, and the raw feelings associated with grade school for the 25 to 35 crowd. For example, I can't play the dodgeball mini game without recalling mornings before school trying to beat Dodgeball for NES before being shuffled to the bus stop.

I'm rambling and I'm done.

Hi all. Thanks for reading, as always. Few comments, as briefly as I can make them:

@Yuki
I'm not advocating for a separate space for serious games, nor am I trying to relocate Bully into such a space. In all the columns in this series, I have tried to discuss commercial games (even old, derided ones like E.T.) from a different perspective than pure entertainment or "fun."

@the1jeffy
You're right that the column is a sort of review, but its a review of how successful (or unsuccessful) I found Rockstar's treatment of the subject of bullying. I wanted to draw attention to the mismatch between their marketing rhetoric (and silence) and the commentary in the game. Anyway, you're also welcome to your own reading of the game, of course. As you say, player experience is inherently subjective.

Couple more points I hoped to get across:

- The mainstream player community does it self no good by opposing serious games wholesale. Whether or not you like the games (and there are some really bad ones), serious games are an important rhetorical tool in the battle against the opponents we often read about on this site.

- When we discuss games like Bully only from within the frame of the negative media debate, we validate that debate. We need to discuss the game on its own terms.

- And on its own terms, I think Bully doesn't cash out the promise of a social critique of Bullying. I think Rockstar's use of weak rhetorical use of social critique is a foil to be used in the media frenzy around the game.

As an aside, there is a really hilarious typo in the article. Can anyone find it before CMP corrects it? Clock's ticking...

Another thing people are losing sight of is that there's apparently a distinction between 'fun' games and 'serious' games. I guess if you're having too much fun, you're not thinking about the underlying moral implications of your actions?
I think it's more valid to say that there is a fun/serious spectrum and games fall at various points along it. At the extreme end of the serious side you get something like Darfur is Dying - I haven't played it but from what I've read it is meant to be frustratingly difficult and depressing because, well, it's not very fun in Darfur these days. The game is very up-front about the fact that there's a message to be taken from it, and everything supports that.
Then you move along the spectrum to other games with messages but with more focus on the game being enjoyable as well. I recall there being a story about a game making fun of a state's health system where you had to keep insurance reps away from a patient to keep them from denying coverage, or something wacky like that. There's a definite message to it, but you could also just play the game to blast the hell out of insurance reps.
Then there's probably some RPGs and strategy games where your characters question their actions. I can't think of any great examples offhand, though FFTactics has its moments and Xenogears might make a good example if I had played it - I hear it's got lots of weighty issues to it.
Then perhaps you get something like Shadow of the Colossus. Mostly focused on game and presentation, but with hints of morality to it, like why exactly you're going around killing these giant but mostly docile creatures and who's really the villain between your character and the animals.
And on the far 'fun' end of the spectrum you have, say, Contra. You are good, aliens are evil, and everything moving on the screen should be shot until it's no longer moving.

Given that, Bully would fall somewhere on the middle of the spectrum - but that's saying a lot, since most commercial games don't embrace many serious aspects. Bully is trying to cater to fans of both camps. For people who like social commentary and satire, they give you a nice plot that doesn't pull many punches. If you don't care about such things, you can also just go around doing whatever the hell you feel like. As much social commentary as GTAs might have, more often I see GTA players get a rocket launcher or tank and just go nuts and worry about plot when they get tired of their rampage.
So, maybe R* isn't coming out and defending its social commentary parts of its games because it doesn't want to be seen as a social commentator. They want to make solid games that a lot of people will enjoy and don't want to look like they're trying to force a viewpoint on players. R* isn't going to come right out and say, yes, they are making a point and condemning some institution for its actions. A lot of people these days are coming right out and condemning R* for its actions, and we tend to find their arguments incomplete and close-minded, judging something in its entirety based on skewing a few choice pieces of information. R* is perhaps trying to not be so shallow, and in the process they're saying not to rail against something just because - that you should view everything with a skeptical eye, gather up the information, and then make your own decision.

@ Yuki

I think you contradicted your self there. At first you said that Rockstar was only out to make a fun game, then you said they were out to make a game so inflammatory to stick to the media and game critics like JT. Im not saying that they are mutually exclusive but, they are definitely two different intents.

I don’t agree with Ian’s position that Rockstar should have or was even in a position to, make a serious game, as I have come to understand them, but I do feel that Rockstar let the gaming community down on two counts. First and foremost, with their startling and accurate satire of the American High school experience, there is no other conclusion than they knowingly and actively went after such satire. Yet over and over again they fail to point this out to the media. They are quoted with saying this is just a game, well no it’s more than that. This is social commentary and satire and I believe that’s needs to be said and it needs to be said very loudly and very clearly. They knew what they were doing and they were trying to make a point. I fell that the only way to get the message across that games are a cultural force on par to films or TV, is to come out and say that we are actively trying to say something, instead of hiding behind, “It’s just a game.”

Secondly, I too feel that Rockstar missed an opportunity to make something wholly original and important, as opposed to just a GTA clone set in high school with all the satire that accompanies that. They failed in that they allow no other path of progress outside of violence. When I first heard about Bully I desperately hoped for something deeper than GTA, in that you would be able to choose a path other than violence in order to navigate the social ladder of Bullworth. There is more than one to skin a cat and there are other ways to put bullies in there place, than with your fist. I’m not saying hug and kisses either. I’m saying humiliation and manipulation are option as well as well as others. If one was allowed to choose there own path certainly it would only make the game and it’s message strong, and give more ammunition to the stick it o mainstream media.

The man@

I wasn't saying either in a sense, but i guess I should clarify.

Rockstar made bully to create a fun game, and the method they used, as in most of there games, was humor, lots of it. More to the point, they maipulated Jack, the media, and the critics to give the game free pres, and sure enough, the game wasn't as bad as thought, boom, they get what they want, lots of sales, and the critics get shafted. 2 birds, one stone. They didn't write bully to make JT looks stupid, they let jt and the critics do that themselves by simply giving a rather harmless game a bad name. So much of what we think of rockstar is based on the MSM. Fact is, rockstar makes games. They just know how to play the media most of the time. Doesn't always work, see Hot Coffe, but you get my drift.

So no, i didn't contradict myself, but I failed to explain it in detail. My mistake.

Ugh, I'm really getting bored with all this "serious" and "fun" games talk. As though a game that presents a serious message is incapable of being fun (or the other way around). Really, we should be saying "Well, blank developers failed to be as satirical of blank issue as they could've been, but their game is still very enjoyable" or "While the game isn't as well crafted as I'd like, blank developers crafted an excellent story, and obviously researched the issues that their game deals with, in great detail".

Drawing the distinction between "serious" and "fun" games (I think) creates a false dilemma. What we should be encouraging the games industry to do, is create better games on the whole (no more freaking three hour long boss fights with a transformed evil wizard who turns out to have been under the control of some glowing piece of shit).

Ideally, there is no opposition between a game being "serious" and it being "fun". There may be a distinction between "serious" and "funny", but fun and funny mean quite distinct things when we're talking about games (and anyway, anything that calls itself satire should be both funny and serious at the same time).

As I see it, we have to independent, or orthogonal (ooh, fancy word) axes for evaluating a game. One is the "fun" axis. This mainly has to do with gameplay. The other axis, "serious", has to do with subject matter. Only in extreme cases (ie. when a game exists solely to make a political statement) is there any reason for a game's placement on the "serious" axis to adversely affect the "fun" axis. Darfur is Dying is one example, and September 12 (I think that's what it was called, anyway), might be another.

But for commercially produced games, well, the "fun" part should always be as high as possible - in other words, the gameplay should be as engaging as possible, regardless of whether the subject matter is serious or not. Having fun with, or perhaps more accurately enjoying, a game does not shut off the part of the brain that registers the subject matter.

@Ian

I think its unfair to make a stereotypical comment like that. Not all artists produce works for the sake of the arts and not all companies are simply created for the sake of making money. I know in the end the bottom line is if the product made money or not but thats how it is for both artists and companies.

I personally believe that many studios have it in their minds to produce enjoyable quality pieces of entertaining medium. I don't think anyone gets into the industry to just make money. Its a highly competetive field with lots of costs and time requirements while other fields are a lot more profitable with almost half the work required. You can look at companies like Behemoth to see that not every studio is just about the dollar.

Now artists create works for their own expression but thats the highly publicised area that probably only represents 10% of their work. Most artists freelance and do work for clients to actually make money either that or they bus tables. I went to college with many artists and now they either enjoy small levels of success or they work in walmart. So please don't paint one occupation to be more sincere than another. I think your expectations for answers should be focused more on the publishers than the studios.

While I would love to see more "serious" games out there, let me take a moment to qualify the term "serious". Satire and Parody are all well and good, and drawing attention to some of the more insane aspects of humanity's existence is worthwhile. But when people try to couple that to some "mission statement" about how important it is to think globally and act locally or similar tripe my amusement turns to contempt in about 0.001 seconds and that book/movie/game is dumped. First because that sort of trailer hitch is almost always contrived and awkward, and second because people doing that in fiction are never able to resist twisting the nature of the characters and the reality presented and then using -them- as arguments instead of logic and facts. An example of proselytizing fiction at its worst is found in Ayn Rand's stuff, and that's coming from someone who actually finds several aspects of Objectivism laudable.

With that said, while I argue against social and political proselytizing, there is definately something to be said for more games that would attempt to deal "seriously" with issues. Frankly I'd say that there are already game franchises that do this on some levels. One of the reasons I enjoy the Splinter Cell series, for example, is that the character of Sam Fisher usually sounds and acts far more like a professional soldier than Snake or any of the number of FPS non-characters. There are also moments that touch on the moral ambiguities of his activities (Think of that classic moment in Pandora Tomorrow: "Lambert, tell me what I just did!", or his short conversation with the North Korean officer during Chaos Theory. In the training videos for Chaos Theory, on at least one occasion Fisher points out that the soldiers he's sneaking around aren't "evil" and that he'd rather let them go home to their wives if possible), although I can't speak for Double Agent since someone decided it would be a wonderful idea to ship the PC version late.

As for Bully in particular, I'll make one point: The weakness of the authority figures is, in my opinion, part of the commentary. There's a reason so many teenagers come out of High School with a distrust or even outright disdain for authority figures. I was lucky in that I had a few good teachers who were more interested in education and inculcating patterns of independent thought and critical analysis rather than simply teaching to tests, but in the area of "law enforcement" it was definately a matter of "when the state can not or will not protect its citizens, citizens must protect themselves."

@Ian

I see what you're saying but the question is are you transferring your expectations onto the game based on the hype the outside media provided? A common occurence within highly publicised industries is that the insiders get bombarded by press release by press release and eventually get jaded of the title. I agree that as a purely sociological piece it leaves a lot to be desired but as a fictional work I think it definately sets itself above a lot the competition.

I also can't see someone comparing this game with GTA when it comes to societal satire. The writing of the GTA series is less satire based and more centered on the defining cinema moments that coincided with the setting. Bully didn't take much from specific media beyond using character arch-types.

Not trying to give you a hard time Ian. I personally enjoyed your article though I didn't agree with it 100%.

@ Fremen

LOL at the thesaurus line. I said as much in my review of his book. If you think this article was too thesaurus-y (invent a word?), you should take a gander at his book.

(Yes, shameless plug for my review, and shameless plug for people to read Bogost's book)

I think Bogost makes some really well thought out points (in the original article and his comments here), but im not certain I buy some of his premises. I totally agree with In particular, I am a bit confused in regards to what he is arguing that the gme promises a level of social commentary that it doesnt deliver ("There is a promise of social commentary that serves a rhetorical purpose in the media, but I don’t think it’s cashed out in the game") and at the same time he is criticizing them for their silence in defending their title. That seems a bit paradoxical to me since it seems like if R* is mostly silent then there isnt much 'promise' for them to violate. I think outside observers and video game defenders make that point a lot, and its been mentioned in some reviews (even MSM ones like that SF Chron piece), but I dont see that R* is really investing themselves very heavily in promoting that their game on the basis that it is must have social commentary (though i think artistically they do have that intent at least partially based upon the satire in it). It seems to me like they are much more takign the approach of letting their work speak for itself which to me means that if people go into it expecting it to be more than it is (or come out of it thinking that it had the promise to be more but settled for less), then to an extent thats mostly just some baggage brought byt he observer. verall im just sort of interested in hearing Ian make a case laying out the specific examples and reasons that he is holding Bully up to this standard of needing to deliver on the promise of social commentary *against bullying*.

Additionally, i think its rather short-sighted to be criticizing R* for not standing up for their product more or giving a lot of ex facto analysis and interretation of their own work. There are reculsive artists in almost every possible modern media, and although its more complex when you are talking about a team of people as opposed to a single auteur which is more the model in say film or music, I dont really find it surprising that the same reclusiveness can exist for game creators. As a comparison, look at the current Borat movie: according to all critics it is great social satire and critically its getting some pretty amazing reviews (95% on rotten tomatoes when i looked yesterday, 90% on metacritic), and that is some material taht on the face of it is incredibly offensive and has some detractors (such as the jewish anti-defamation league, the government of kazhakistan) while others are saying that Sacha Baron Cohen is a visionary comedian/satirist/etc. But Baron Cohen isnt giving any interviews or appearances except in teh Borat character, and not referencing either the praise or the detractions in any sort of third person way at all. Its not a perfect analogy, but to me its instructive that in that case nobody is criticising him for not weighing in on the debate and deconstructing his movie (somethign which he has essentialyl refused to do for any of his work) on the basis that that means that the detractors will get to frame the rhetoric of the debate. Everybody intuitively understands that hes already dropped the largest "framing" of the debate possible in terms of letting the work speak for itself, and its his right as a reclusive artist to just let all of the criticism roll off his back. The critics who think the movies is great will of course analyze it and deconstruct it (thats their job after all) but i dont think its the responsibility of the artist to deconstruct his work and position it for the public, he has done enough of his side of the social bargain merely by producing it. In the same way i think its R*'s prerogative how much they want to discuss bully and respond to the critics etc, its really teh job of the critics and cultural forces who think its a good game (as always its the academics who write the last word anyways) to hold up that side of the debate.

Thanks for joining the debate Ian. Lots of interesting comments.

I do have to take issue with the thing about controversial movies - Games are not movies, and I don't think they're able to be equated at all.

To me, games are more like television, with a lot more anonymous players behind the scenes, with much less authorship being able to be placed at the feet of one person, unlike a movie director or producer.

Sure, in TV you have your Aaron Spellings and the like, but for every Spelling in TV, there are a million non-name person who's worked on thousands of shows.

And when was the last time you saw people on a press junket for a controversial episode of ER or CSI? Maybe the actors are interviewed, but it's rare you'll see an interview with the writer or producer, unless they're a big name on a big, newer series.


And kinda off topic, but this has been troubling me since the begining of the whole Bully thing - does anyone think if this game had Bart Simpson as it's main protagonist, it'd get the amount of attention it is getting?

The Simpson's is similar in it's social commentary and satire of high school life. Bart is someone who wants to be accepted by the different cliques, but gets himself into trouble, often through no fault of his own.

But the Simpson's isn't lambasted in the media or child protection groups - sure it used to be, but after 18 seasons, if anything it has lost it's impact.

Bully, being a new medium and new IP, is getting possibly unfair criticism from all corners, much like the Simpsons did in it's early days. But, as can be seen from the Simpsons, the attacks are very much unwarranted.

@Toe
My comments about defending the game have nothing to do with free speech rights. I'm not talking about defending the game in the absolute sense, but defending the success of the particular representation of high school social politics in the game.