School votes against Rockstar

A SCHOOL board has written to a game maker to ask it to stop developing a controversial new game called ‘Bully' and is asking suppliers to pull the game from local stores before it has even hit the shops.

Miami-Dade School Board voted to write to Rockstar, the maker of Grand Theft Auto, expressing its fears that the game might encourage bullying at the school.

The game, which was to be released last autumn, has been delayed a number of times. It is apparently set in a school and includes fights, slingshots and er that is it. In fact most of the reports of the game seem to suggest that it is light weight and fairly tongue-in-cheek.

Rockstar has been quiet about the game and what it contains, but the school board fears that it will be like Grand Theft Auto in the classroom. School Board member Frank Bolaños, who introduced the resolution urging Rockstar not to release Bully, is also asking local merchants not to sell it and asking parents not to buy it.

The Miami Herald, which reports the story quotes the Anti-Grand Theft Auto campaigner Jack Thompson, who implied that he had something to do with telling the school about the game. He told hacks that the problem had to reach a PR critical mass yet which was what he was trying to do.

Thompson said that by the time Rockstar releases the game, it will be too late to stop it. Of course it also prevents people making an informed judgement of the game.

One of the local gaming community pointed out that he will look a little silly if the game is like Rockstar's latest effort which is table tennis.

More here. µ