Bullying Games

Games are, as we know, often picked on as being the cause of all that is wrong in modern society. When a McDonald’s chief blames games for obesity, we know that games come pretty low in the acceptability pecking order. And now the BBC has posted a piece about the new-edition of Bully being released (formerly released in the UK as Canis Canim Edit).

And it’s shocking stuff:

It features a teenager who adjusts to life at a new boarding school by harassing others, including teachers.
The abuse includes dunking pupils’ heads in toilets, photographing them naked and physically assaulting them.

Shocking indeed. In fact, given that the game has been playable since last year, I’m very disappointed that the BBC are happy to present the game as though the point of it is to become a bully and harass others - when as would be known to anyone who’s gone as far as actually reading a review of the game (a step the reporter ought to have taken), or possibly even play it, it’s pretty much the exact opposite…

So here is a graphic description of a fight from Wired from A YEAR AND A HALF AGO:

I laid into the kid with a flurry of punches, including a punishing uppercut I’d been taught by an alcoholic Vietnam vet. Wham, wham, wham: Pretty soon I’d pummeled my opponent into the ground. And for my brutal finishing move?
I leaned over and gave him a hand up. I lectured him about the importance of not bullying defenseless kids, and he apologized, promising that he wouldn’t be such a meanie any more.
Then we became friends.
This was, I confess, not quite what I expected when I first heard about Bully, the hotly anticipated new title from Rockstar Games. Indeed, it’s not what anyone expected.

Hmmm this doesn’t sound like the same game the BBC are describing, even though it does indeed feature children assaulting other children. (Even the use of the word ‘assault’ in this context is dubious. We all know that kids fight, but call it ‘assault’ and it takes on a more serious tone)

What about photographing naked students? Well, indeed, a character in the game charges you with snapping the head cheerleader in the shower as a means to help defeat the ‘jocks’. How graphic is this? Like the author of the BBC piece, I haven’t played Bully. Unlike the reporter, I thought it worthwhile checking this out. Off to GameFaqs:

Use this opportunity to creep down the hallway and into the girls bathroom. There is no need to enter the shower area, just stay in the bathroom and aim your camera toward the stall where Mandy is taking a shower. Don’t get excited, you’re not going to see anything. Just a door, a lot of steam and some naked feet.

(From Bully Walkthrough by Eric Waechter)

So it does happen, but perhaps not quite so graphically as the BBC imply. Not only that, but a later task is to destroy all the copies of the picture that have been made in order to make it up with Mandy. That done there may be some kissing.

Compare the writing on Bully to the treatment given to a recent remake of a ‘British Institution’ of a film which just happens to feature highly sexualized school girls:

When the modern version of St Trinian’s reaches cinemas this Christmas, its makers promise an anarchic view of British public school life that will be an “antidote to Harry Potter”.
…
Talulah Riley, who plays one of the unruly pupils, warns: “They will do anything and everything - there’s drugs, there’s sex, there’s tattoos, piercings.”
“It’s going to shock some people,” says co-director Oliver Parker.

All this in a cheery light puff piece St Trinian’s promises class act.

I think I’ll let Wired’s Clive Thompson have the closing words:

It turns out the game doesn’t glorify bullying at all.Indeed, it’s almost precisely the opposite. In Bully, you play as a young tough whose parents dump you in a decrepit reform school out in the countryside. Bullworth is filled with all the usual cliques: Preppies with coiffed hair and poncy accents, geeks in thick-framed glasses, greasers hanging out in the scrap yard — and, of course, blindingly dumb jocks. This is the social morass in which you must defend yourself.

But you are not, in fact, intended to be a bully. Instead, most of your early missions involve you defending the helpless: Escorting weak-bladdered nerds past phalanxes of threatening athletes, or sneaking into the girls’ locker room to retrieve an essay that popular cheerleader stole from a helpless she-geek.

There’s one moment when things look pretty ugly — you accompany a gang of toughs who want to beat up a homeless guy. Except they wind up running scared, and you befriend the hobo.

…Bully plays like a homage to the 1980s flicks that originally explored high-school as a metaphor for society — like Heathers or The Breakfast Club. As with any John Hughes movie, the cheerleaders of Bully lord their power over lesser mortals (”I can do anything I want, anything,” one brags), and prefects re-enact their own personal beatdowns by victimizing you (”I’ve been waiting to do this a long time!” one gloats as he thrashes me)

All of which means I’ll be interested to see what the critics do when they finally actually clap their eyes on Bully.

(Sadly actually clapping eyes on the game does not appear to be required to be a critic)

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• Steve Aschburner