UK Politicians Threatened By Bully

Though its release date is still a ways off Next Generation is reporting that UK politicians are already calling for careful consideration, and possible banning, of the Rockstar title Bully. From the article: "Do you share my concern at the decision of Rockstar to publish a new game called Bully in which players use their on-screen persona to kick and punch other schoolchildren? Will you ask the prime minister to refer this video to the British Board of Film Classification? If they don't make any changes will the government use its powers to ban this video[game]?"

Comments

Wtf?

[KDan]

Why the hell would anyone want to play a "bully" game?

If you were a bully at school, you've already done it. If you were bullied at school, that's hardly going to be an enjoyable activity.

What a bizarre idea for a game...

Daniel

Re:Wtf?

[Prospero's Grue]

If you were a bully at school, you've already done it. If you were bullied at school, that's hardly going to be an enjoyable activity.

I listened to a radio documentary about bullying a few months ago - and there a few "bullying" games out there (one of which focused on girls and relied on social stigma as opposed to violence). The woman they had try it out enjoyed it.

Frankly, I don't buy either of your arguments. If you're the type who likes to dominate - then gaming offers you a means to do so (and is consequence free). If you're someone who has been dominated - then to dominate others (even fictional others) in a game can be cathartic.

That doesn't mean I support a ban - but I don't think you can assume there's no market for it.

Re:Wtf?

[Pxtl]

Because the game isn't about being a bully. It's about fighting back. And meeting girls, pranking teachers, etc. Imho, it's the coolest concept ever for a game, and I'm disgusted by people who think "ooh, Rockstar is making a bad game about beating up kids" without even looking into it (or looking at what your kids are going through at school and realising how this game might make them feel better about it).

Re:Wtf?

[sbryant]

Why the hell would anyone want to play a "bully" game?

Why would anyone want to play a game where you steal cars and shoot the police?

I guess neither you nor the politicians ever played Skool Daze, where you could go around hitting other kids. (There was actually more to the game than that, though!)

Real life bullying is a serious problem, but I don't (yet) see that such games make kids more prone to violence or bullying. In fact, too much game-playing tends to lead to apathy, AFAICT.

All that said, I too think it's a bizarre idea for a game. I shan't be getting it!

-- Steve

Re:Wtf?

[LoRdTAW]

Any game that lets me beat children is a definate buy for me. Besides I went to jail enough already.

Re:Wtf?

[lightspawn]

That's hardly fair, isn't it? You're using your actual knowledge of the game in this discussion, instead of imagining all kinds of things. What are the politicians supposed to do?

Re:Wtf?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rockstar isn't about making good games ...
They aren't about making games that empower people ...

Simply put Rockstar is about making any game and then putting a marketing spin on it in such a way that it offends everyone except for their core demographic; they add elements to their games that are not important, and don't really add anything, simply to offend people.

Why do they do it? Because getting a politician to claim that their game should be banned (or actually getting the game banned) does wonders to build 'street cred' ammong insecure teen boys, who then buy the game in droves.

Do I think Rockstar doesn't make good games? No, Do I think there games could not empower people? No. I do think that they're playing a dangerous game that will only result in massive political opposition to 'Mature' rated videogames that will have governments regulating the videogame market; the reason the ESRBs were created is because the videogame industry did not want the government to have control, Rockstar is single handedly undoing the work that was done beforehand.

Re:Wtf?

[RoadDoggFL]

It's a shame that you posted anonymously because you deserve Insightful mods for that.

I can't help but wish politician were smarter because the whole violent game issue has extremely valid points on both sides. I'm a huge supporter of seeing video games as an art form, and at the very least as a vessel for freedom of speech, and in that sense I feel that any developer should be able to make and responsibly market any game to a reasonable market without any legal issues. But at the same time, it's petty for gamers to say that violent games don't make kids violent. Just like football and other competetive (especially contact sports in general), (violent) games can make kids more aggressive and violent themselves. I know this because they've affected me, flat out. I grew up fantasizing that every random place I was going to in real life was a bloody battlefield and was fascinated at the thought of how I would do in the situation of the main characters I play as in war games.

Am I violent? No, despite growing up playing roller hockey (ice hockey players are encouraged to go for more hits so I don't know if I'd be different if I was born in Michigan rather than Florida) competetively and seeing war and violence glorified, I was always able to somewhat keep myself in check and remind myself that games are games and real life is real life. My cousin, on the other hand, between growing up wrestling us (his cousins, older than him by five years) and playing violent games is a serious bully at school, and whenever he sees an ad for a game with guns his instant reaction is "that game looks awesome!"

The point that parents should decide what their kids can and can't handle doesn't refute the fact that there are kids who can be profoundly affected by games that encourage you to kill (I'm not blaming anything for Columbine or anything like that, just wrapping things up). Yes, parents should raise their kids, but what's the difference between banning violent games from kids and banning cigarettes from kids? Both are the parent's responsibility (one is significantly easier to acquire... but you get my point), and both can be harmful. The problem I see right now though, is that it seems they're trying to ban mature games from kids under all circumstances, even if parents think their kids can handle it. I can't say I agree with either or neither side here, but gamers who so adamantly defend games in light of these posts are just as bad as the politicians, imho.

Re:Wtf?

[Guiannos]

This isn't a new concept, though... I remember playing the card game Lunch Money back in high school, which is the same kind of thing...

The premise is that you are a bunch of catholic school girls trying to beat each other up for your lunch money on the playground. Cards include attacks, weapons, etc.

Fun game, regardless of your feelings on bullying.

Re:Wtf?

[Wandering Idiot]

My cousin, on the other hand, between growing up wrestling us (his cousins, older than him by five years) and playing violent games is a serious bully at school, and whenever he sees an ad for a game with guns his instant reaction is "that game looks awesome!

But are you sure the bullying is due to wrestling and video games, and not just him being big for his age/a jerk/etc.? I mean, you yourself just said you grew up similarly, and yet never became a bully.

I'm not saying video games can't have some emotional or cognitive impact- pretty much any medium can, but I haven't seen much to indicate a large causal relationship between fictional and real violence. Certainly not enough to consider the regulation of it a public safety, rather than a public standards/obscenity matter.

Vengence is mine! Muahahahah

[RingDev]

Man that would be a great game. For adults.

-Rick

I am well over 18

[FidelCatsro]

There has been a lot of devolution going on in UK politics the past few years.
Some of it great , like the devolution of parliamentary powers . Others not so great , such as the New labour AKA: Old conservatives.

This type of censorship is totally unacceptable , we have a ratings system which is complied to by retailers , giving it an 18 rating is more than sufficient .
Devolution of public freedom ,many steps were made during the 70's and 80s to loosen up the censorship in the UK . Are we now taking another step backwards, if this comes to pass then I would say yes.

Ignore it if you want it to go away.

[thenetbox]

Rockstar games probably have low marketting costs because the people who are trying to shut them down are the best marketting team a company can hope to have.

If parents did their jobs and followed the game rating systems that are being spoon fed to them then there would be no problems anywhere.

The Jerking of Knees

[Thedalek]

Every time Bully comes up, there's always the instant response of "Oh, that's horrible! A game where you bully kids?!"

So many people seem to be missing the point that this game is about pulling pranks on bullies, not kicking Mortimer Snerd's butt and taking his lunch money. The idea is supposed to be that you get picked on, then you start fighting back on behalf of the little guys.

Re:The Jerking of Knees

[Seumas]

It's interesting how parents are more concerned with a game that involves bullies than they are with actual bullies. While things are changing, bullying is still considered a "right of passage" for victims (even though it compounds to the extent that many of these victims just drop out of school because they can't focus on education and surviving every day and nobody will take them seriously or extend a hand) and "boys will be boys" for the bullies.

I excelled in three sports simultaneously (wrestling starting at five, judo starting at eight and jujitsu starting at ten), and was always too much of a softy to ever bully anyone, but you did see it going on often. And while people like myself could step in whenever we saw someone being mistreated, you couldn't be there all the time and if someone steps in to prevent an act of bullying today, that bully is just going to come down twice as hard on the victim when nobody is around, tomorrow.

So, frankly, I'm glad to see that bullying is slowly being treated more like the crime it is than just "children being children". School is for educaiton - not abuse. Period. But I'm disapointed that more people are more upset over an innocent game than the actual bullying itself. And what - are they going to start claiming that Rockstar is responsible for encouraging and teaching children to e bullies? After all, it's not like bullying has been going on for oh.... at least a few millenia.

Re:The Jerking of Knees

[Seumas]

In my experience, the person who does the most damage gets the punishment. If a bully picked on a kid, the bully would usually not get in trouble, because nobody would tell. If someone stepped in and kicked the bully's ass (which I did a lot, because even kids much older than myself weren't aware of my outside-of-school sports), the person who beat up the bully would get suspended or otherwise punish.

I also knew kids who would be picked on bullies and, finally, fight back. But the teachers always came into the mix after the bully had already started the fight, the other kid had kicked his ass, and the kid who was the victim of the bully got the suspension and punishment.

So, really, you can't win. And there are always ignorant adults who feel that one person under 18 assaulting another person under the age of 18 is just "kids being kids".

There are certainly times when a kid is clearly just whining. But there are more often than not times when a kid is clearly being harassed and violated and assaulted. I have no problem with treating these kids as criminals. Their age and location (school) should not excuse them from punishment.

And ironically, it seems these days that it's the quiet kids who are picked on that are singled out by adminsitrators as potential Columbine follow-ups --- rather than the punks who are acting out by harassing and terrorizing those kids in the first place.

Still, I hope adults continue to take these things more seirously. There's nothing I hate more than someone my age justifying what happens to kids in school today because "I was picked on and beat up and I turned out fine" or "I beat up and picked on other kids and they turned out fine". I mean . . . come on . . . If adults did this sort of thing to each other, they'd be imprisoned.

Re:The Jerking of Knees

[Xarius]

1. It's 'rite', not 'right'. Important difference. </pedant>

2. Bullying is increasingly getting worse as a direct result of powers of discipline being removed from schoolteachers and the like. We're in a society where kids cannot get shouted at school, cannot get a good thrashing from their parents, and can basically do what they want.

I don't know how it works elsewhere, but in my school bullies were sneered at by all of us popular kids (gasp, a slashdotter was popular) and generally looked down upon. The only people who got bullied were the poor or stupid kids, of which the bullies were a part.

If we had nice corporal punishment, a good thrashing for bullies, it wouldn't happen. No one likes to be beaten, so to misquote the old phrase: Take the rod, beat the child. Liberal pansies can moan all they like, kids don't understand being talked at, but they do understand a smacked arse.

Bully?

[Council]

From the article: "Do you share my concern at the decision of Rockstar to publish a new game called Bully? If you don't, I'll beat you up after gym class!"

but, the british government...

[eglamkowski]

Goes out of its way to feel sensitive towards those who want to blow up the kids in the schools. Banning Piglet and piggy banks.

What a screwed up sense of priorities. Worry about what the kids are exposed to only AFTER you worry about the kids getting blown up by a member of the religion of peace.