Outraged youths lash out at Bully

Thanks to the wonderful people on GameFAQs I happened across this little gem.

Taylor Malzahn, a 16-year-old junior ... was so alarmed by the description she read in ... [a] video game magazine that she rallied her classmates against "Bully." "I was actually just shocked that my brother thought the game was cool," Taylor said.

This reminds me of a story from my home town. A child came home and told their parents all about how Pin the Tail on the Donkey was a game encouraging animal abuse. No, seriously, that's how the story went. Can people not determine reality from fantasy any more? Are their logic cortexes permanently damaged by all the Coke they're toking? But the stupidity continues...:

being called 'stupid' is not fun and should not be rewarded with points," ... "It can also teach them violent ways, and they'll use them in real life."

Actually I think the idea of getting score bonuses for WWF-esque taunts is great! And anyone who thinks that they can try something they saw in a Rockstar game—where I should point out that you can fall from 100 stories, take two shotgun blasts to the chest, and still manage to get up and sprint a good 20 meters before showing any signs of fatigue—then you are really too stupid to live.

"If we can get one mom or dad to not buy the game, we've been successful," teacher Dave Simpson said.

Yes, my good man, but that's missing the point. This game is ours, for us, for mature, adult(ish) gamers, NOT for Little Johnny! If shops would just stop selling M-rated games to minors there would be no problem.

Well, there is the potential that the game (being seemingly bloodless) may slip through as a T, but I'm hoping that its incredible quantity of ass-whooping coupled with R*'s media reputation will give this an M. The fewer stupid children who can easily access this game the better.

I guess I've been so busy following GTA: Liberty City Stories that Bully disappeared off my radar for a bit, and so I had no idea about the latest reports. When Jack talked about Bully's features on a recent Gameshout.com interview he mentioned new things such as giving swirlies and attacking people with cricket bats and slingshots, and I exclaimed "COOOOOL!"

Let's see if an ass-whooping improves your manners!

And why do I say it's cool? First of all, it's "where no game has gone before". But above that it's not fudging real. Yes bullying is terrible, but so is crime and violence, two things videogames also "glorify" quite successfully. I can merrily play GTAIII and rampage around a lookalike New York while emptying an AK into twelve cops and a heli without a second thought—but when there's a real-world police shooting on the news I'm horrified. There is no correlation, people! Rockstar has this amazing power to take something terrible from the real world and make turn it into a setting for lighthearted fun, and I both enjoy and admire that. And anyone who can play that game and think the material within is entirely real has officially failed at life.

I feel sorry for these poor brainwashed children though. I bet they've been convinced of the evils of meat and leather and potentially child-crafted imported goods too.

Today's tap water toast is most emphatically to Rockstar for working on a game where I can have the (to me) entirely alien experience of living as a bullied schoolchild. I can't wait to hand out some swirlies, and I'll be thinking of these losers while I'm doing it. —Garrett

EDIT: oh, and check out both my past rants and my growing del.icio.us collection of Jack-tastic news updates, just in case you haven't been following this madness. Well, he sure makes good water-cooler conversation... —Garrett