Online Safety Expert Denounces Bully

[gamepolitics]

Comments

[startropics]

Hmm. Well when you play off kids fears, you make money, and if you roll the number Six fifteen times in a row, you might cause some kind of incident.

When you play off adults' fears, you form policy, outlaw stuff, and generally become a real prick.

I'd say the second one.

The Bully Bandwagon is getting crowded...

[startropics]

Why does every single critic assume that kids are stupid and immitate every single thing they see? I saw James Bond shooting people and having sex when I was 10 (Albeit I didn't quite understand it at the time), but that didn't inspire me to go shoot people and sleep with a multitude of beautiful women.

Although I'd still like to do the latter...

[woundwalker]

'they could be just like Jimmy Hopkins and beat the daylights out of their real-life bullies'

Hey, that's a pretty usual (and damn effective) course of action for kids at my old school, and this was years before 'Bully'.

[phrawzty]

Yeah, no kidding. When i started throwing punches and putting my agressors in their places physically, i stopped getting picked on.

Problem solved, case closed. :P

[chenry]

i only had to do it once, but it was the manner i did it in. Apparently when you deliver and nose-crushing headbutt, everyone thinks your totally insane and leaves you alone.

[dog_welder]

So I guess that swift punch to a bully's nose that I inflicted on the school yard was inspired by a video game. Oh, wait, that happened 30 years ago.

Oh, and the bully stopped picking on me at that point.

Two wrongs don't make a right, but in this case 3 lefts certainly did.

Maybe people should start looking at the bigger problem that bullying actually is. If there were no bullies, there wouldn't need to be a fear of "copycat violence" directed at bullies, now would there?

[donnaidh_sidhe]

How long will it be before we hear on the news about a victim of bullies who is inspired by the new game and retaliates using a baseball bat?

The alternative is sitting there and taking it, or complaining to adults and getting beaten up for it. Well, all right -- maybe complaining works every now and then.

[ianc14]

Hitchcock, who recommends an "M" (17 and older) rating for Bully, adds:
It will get what it deserves. whther thats a M or T

[volcanman]

I sort of hope that it does get an "M"-rating so that in case there "prediction" comes true, there would be no way to blame the game since only 17+ year olds can buy it in the first place.

Still, I'm sick of these people jump on the bandwagon. It's a game that hasn't even been rated and it will be rated on content, not what an under-developed person might do after they play it.

[jerrydavid]

wow, at first reading I was thinking of the "Alred Hitchcock" as the person quoted, in the back of my mind.
I wonder what he'd say to this?