Teachers want bullying game pulled from stores

It's quite rare that I sit on the fence on any given issue, but this one has me scared right up off the grass.

On one hand, you've got the entire video game censorship debate, which I'm a bit more conservative on than the majority of the industry. I don't think any game should be banned outright - (not even the US Army-funded titles advocating para-military invasions of Venezuela) but I do sympathise with those calling for a more strictly regulated, movie-industry-esque rating system.

I didn't defend the ability in Rockstar's more violent series, (Grand Theft Auto) to pick up a street worker, enjoy her services, carve her up with a chainsaw, and then take all the money from her carcass. In no way did I ever consider that an "artistic expression," and in my view, that game should have been regulated far out of the reach of under-agers.

The main reason I've yet to take a position on Bully, is because quite frankly, I haven't played it. But in light of the new controversy, stemming from a sector I have a good deal of patience for, I fully intend to grab a copy today, and reserve comment until I've completed it.

Until then, here's an article that appeared in the Province this morning.

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By Clare Ogilvie, The Province

Published: Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Canadian teachers are adding their voices to four million educators globally to try to stop stores from selling an updated teen video game that was rereleased Tuesday.

Bully: Scholarship Edition, produced by Vancouver-based Rockstar Games, pits a 15-year-old student against other students and teachers.

"The concern is that it is glorifying violence, [that] it is glorifying bullying," Emily Noble, president of the Canadian Teachers Federation, said yesterday. "It is a story about a young lad who goes to school and his way of dealing with situations is to bully others."

Noble believes this is the first time teachers have banded together in this way to fight a video game. That's partly because the game is produced in Canada and because the game is set in a school, she said.

When asked why the CTF would take a stand against a game in which no one dies, there is no blood and guts and in which the bully gets as good as he gives, Noble said: "I think people are standing up and speaking out and saying what was acceptable a little while ago is not acceptable anymore."

The game's creator, Sam Houser, said in a press release: "It's really difficult to make a compelling comedy action game about anything, let alone about the experience of being at high school, and we think we achieved something unique with Bully."

At the University of B.C., curriculum studies associate professor Don Krug said trying to get stores to stop selling the video is just a quick fix. It's also likely, he added, that removing it from circulation would simply make it more attractive to kids.

Instead, suggested Krug, caregivers, educators and others should use the game-playing experience to talk about the behaviour. "It is not going to go away," he said.

Old Night Trap Mini-Documentary

Have been downloading, burning, and archiving Sega CD games all week. Trying to get all 148 official releases compiled, and Jesus Christ, is there ever a deficit of decent games for that system.

For those who were much smarter than I back in the early to mid-nineties, and resisted plunking down $400 bones onto this Genesis add-on, you may not be entirely aware of just how much of a dumping ground this system was for crappy experiments in full-motion-video. (FMV)

FMV, of course, never really took off in the gaming industry, since gamers prefer to play their games than to watch them, and besides some forays into PC gaming, as well as a few failed exploits on the 3D0, and CD-i systems, companies like "Digital Pictures" played and died almost exclusively on the Sega CD.

A few interesting titles did come out, however which played a role in shaping the video game industry. Perhaps none quite so infamously as "Night Trap."

This game provided a few wacky American senators their first fodder for what is now an ongoing debate on Video Game censorship. Though I'm not entirely opposed to a movie-industry style restriction system for video games, what was so funny about the roaring controversy over Night Trap was the sheer harmlessness of the game; by today's standards particularly, but even by the standards of the time in which the game was released.

The following mini-documentary shows a bit of the insanity that dogged the game. The disappointment, of course, is not that the game was unfairly attacked... but rather how no one ever really talked about how much the game actually sucked.

From now until the end of time, solely because of the disproportionate amount of controversy mounted on this steamer, gamers interested in the history of the industry will be forced to play a complete waste of their time, just to get a sense of the beginnings of the video game rating system.

What a waste.



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