Quid pro quo

With the “Bully” saga going on and on and on, Rockstar have pulled a rather stunning coup on the British and world media. Now, of course, it’s backfiring on them.

The story so far: Rockstar Vancouver (not Rockstar North of GTA fame, the people who gave you the sequel to “Homeworld“) announce a game called “Bully“, and provide various screenshots of kids giving each other, eg, wedgies. People think it’s going to be a GTA-alike bully simulation game and raise hell.

Rockstar then pull off the wool to reveal it is, in fact, a school survival game in a very jocular 80s Grange Hill-esque tone. People, including the Daily Mail and people involved with anti-bullying charities, ignore the announcement and keep on raising hell. Rockstar repeat the announcement more forcefully, and change the name in European territories to “Canis Canem Edit” (“Dog Eat Dog”, the fictitious school’s motto.) You can guess it: people are still raising hell, despite the fact that the game is complete, has gone through the censors and come out with an ESRB “T” and (more importantly) BBFC 15; it wasn’t intended as a kids’ game anyway.

Now the latest announcement is that Dixons Stores Group is refusing to stock the game. Considering that they stock the 18-rated, gangs and sex and similar nasties GTA, and hope to stock more of it, that seems a bit much.

Admittedly GTA is popular because it doesn’t take itself remotely seriously (something which both Daily Mail type critics and people who rip it off don’t get at all), but from all the reports I’ve seen the same is true of “Bully“. So basically it’s DSG caving into a media backlash, the same way that Game caved over (Rockstar North’s actually distasteful) “Manhunt” a few years back.

Of course, “Manhunt” was back in Game mere months after they claimed to have removed it, so “Canis Canem Edit” will probably turn up on PC World shelves soon. Nevertheless, it’s the principle of the thing; if you’re going to ban games designed for adults from your shelves, ban them all, not just the ones that get coverage in the Metro. Journalists should realise that for some time the biggest demographic for games has been twentysomethings and older; this was true even back in 1995/6, and this group wants games that might actually cover adult themes (although they might not want all GTA all the time).

Rockstar are, of course, not blameless at all in the issue; they started it, and from the (for once, unintentional) controversy over Hot Coffee they probably knew what they were getting themselves into. But they did it anyway. No-one’s played the game yet; it might be crap for all I know, but the controversy will sell many more copies than the entire UK shipment of Psychonauts.

(And couldn’t they have just called it “Dog Eat Dog”? It’s a lot better.)

If it turns out to be a decent game, all well and good, but this kind of marketing can only be bad for gamers and gaming as a whole; making it seem like a “flash in the pan” medium. And the lack of games that cover adult issues well is very troubling. Nevertheless, gaming is a relatively infant medium rapidly growing up, and hopefully we’ll be at the stage that Psychonauts or a non-franchise game with a decent storyline and great gameplay can sell Big Numbers soon (XBLA, Steam and the Nintendo Wii might help here, and Bioshock looks like it could be interesting.) But we’re not there yet.