Bully Boycott Urged in New Zealand
A psychotherapist in Tauranga, New Zealand is calling for a boycott of Rockstar's upcoming Bully.
As reported by the Bay of Plenty Times, Augustina Driessens fears that the as-yet-unrated game will provoke youth violence.
"They [children] will go and get this video game and they'll all go and watch it and what will we get? More violence," she said.
"They're already beating old people up and it's not even safe to walk in the street anymore, so it has to go back to the parents. It's not good, it's terrible. Let the parents take responsibility and teach them bullying is not acceptable. What's the matter with these people?"
An official at Tauranga Boys' College, Rob Naumann, compared Bully to another demonized game, Dungeons & Dragons:
"Ten years ago there was that Dungeons & Dragons," he told the newspaper. "There was a lot of fuss around that and there was probably some well-documented cases of people who didn't sit well with the game, who associated with the characters and couldn't let them go and couldn't divorce between the reality and the game..."
Naumann, however, did take somewhat of a wait-and-see attitude, saying, "Until I saw (Bully) I'd prefer not to make comment. Certainly the term 'bully' is very emotive. While there's bullying in school it's a society problem, as a nation we have to deal with it and certainly stuff like this [game] doesn't help."