Former Rockstar producer and writer Dan Houser has revealed the truth behind Bully 2.
The Story Of Bully
Bully was released in 2003, at a time when Rockstar was experimenting with different games and story ideas. Part of the game’s controversy is confusion over the title.
The lead character is a juvenile delinquent named Jimmy Hopkins who enters a troubled school named Bullworth Academy. The player can choose to play Jimmy as a bully, but it’s not the story of him being a bully.
The game confronts bullying culture among children. To do so, it takes the perspective of one of the kids in this environment.
Bully would be a commercial and critical success, and even get a surprise port on the Wii. But Dan Houser has always lamented that the public, including the players themselves, did not understand Rockstar’s intent with the game.
Rockstar Was Making Bully 2 – But Won’t Admit It
Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive won’t officially admit they made Bully 2. But based on reports and interviews with developers off the record, they were working on the game from 2008 to 2010.
Because Rockstar won’t admit to working on the game, we also don’t know why they chose to cancel it. What we know from these rumors is that Dan Houser himself was writing this title, and it was assigned to Rockstar New England.
If the rumors are true, Rockstar also had huge ambitions with Bully 2. In fact, some of the game design ideas they had for it made its way to Red Dead Redemption.
This all hints that Rockstar originally planned to make Bully their second big franchise after Grand Theft Auto. In other words, it should have been where Red Dead is now.
Dan Houser’s Final Word On The Matter
Houser was asked why Rockstar never got to make Bully 2. He said this in an interview with IGN:
I think it was just bandwidth issues. If you’ve got a small lead creative team and a small senior leadership crew, you just can’t do all the projects you want.
Houser gave a similar answer to this question years ago. Since he no longer works for Rockstar, it’s clear that nothing has changed.
Can Rockstar Still Make A Bully 2?
There are no copyright issues that would stop Rockstar from making a new Bully video game. Rockstar is also unafraid to take on controversial subject matter.
But Bully is probably problematic for a different reason. Dan Houser must have struggled to communicate the statement he wanted to make about bullying and juvenile delinquency.
It’s easy to see that in another media that’s dipped deep in this subject matter; film. From A Clockwork Orange, Larry Clark’s Kids, to Menace II Society, juvenile delinquency movies have always provoked controversy.
Could other writers in Rockstar make this idea work? Maybe. But the direction the company has taken now makes it very unlikely they’d be interested.
