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Bully
So I played "Bully" a bit, which is a game about high school by the makers of grand theft auto. It was billed as "the most controversial game ever made" but, honestly, it fell pretty flat for me on that front. The most "controversial" thing that you can do is make out with another guy if you ask him to. It's a far cry from GTA's sleeping with hookers in the back seat of a stolen car and then beating them up to get your money back.
It's an excellent game, as a game. I should say that. It's a blast just to run around and skip class and hit on girls. I find it enormously cute that art class makes you a better kisser. Etc.
But in a nation where high school kids and teachers are facing down drugs, gangs, and guns, it falls seriously flat for me as a narrative. Rockstar Games is supposed to be the cutting edge of acceptability, making art both offensive and provocative, and if the best answer they can give us for school violence is stink bombs, wedgies, and itching powder I am desperately afraid for the state of art in our country.
It's an excellent game, as a game. I should say that. It's a blast just to run around and skip class and hit on girls. I find it enormously cute that art class makes you a better kisser. Etc.
But in a nation where high school kids and teachers are facing down drugs, gangs, and guns, it falls seriously flat for me as a narrative. Rockstar Games is supposed to be the cutting edge of acceptability, making art both offensive and provocative, and if the best answer they can give us for school violence is stink bombs, wedgies, and itching powder I am desperately afraid for the state of art in our country.
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On the other hand, if you tie it into a well known IP, and paint it as a holy war with Christians as the good guys, you're totally green to build a game of random mass murder.
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I mean, fuck, in GTA you shoot up racial gangs. Those (fictional) kids you're shooting can't be much older than 18. Why the fuck can't they grow the balls to put that sort of thing in Bully?
yrs--
--Ben
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2. Rockstar was/is still reeling from the "Hot Coffee" scandal.
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To expect something really shocking and provocative from it is asking a lot - like watching a daytime soap opera waiting for it to push the boundaries of gay rights - it might just happen, but you'll be waiting an awful long time.
I suspect that the most provocative and/or offensive work you'll find is done by individuals, or under small indy labels - like in any other artform, the mainstream overtly commercial work will not be pushing those boundaries.
about shanghai
(Anonymous) 2007-02-08 05:42 pm (UTC)(link)