If Bully had been rated M.

[chuckman1]

I feel Bully works good as a T for Teen game. It's a good standalone title from Rockstar that shows how they handle a younger crowd. But what if they'd gone all out and made it with no restraint. How do you think it'd be? Or how would you like it to be?

First, I'd say give New Coventry, the townie area, and some parts of Bullworth the hood makeover. More graffiti and generally run down areas but also add more realism. Some of the homeless people would have needles instead of forties. The greasers hanging out in the abandoned projects would be drinking, smoking, and probably selling drugs to the homeless people. Also in American schools drugs are easy to come by so maybe Jimmy could buy and sell them. (Then again this is New England so I'm not sure if it's like that over there.) While we're at it we could have raunchier and darker humor. And our good pal Jimmy gets laid by that townie chick. Oh and more theft and all that bad stuff. Also maybe weapons could feel a bit more brutal (but not killing brutal), A baseball bat to the head would fuck you up. Also we can have the characters say "Fuck you *****."

So what do you think?

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

There would be killing, obviously. There's no killing per se in Bully. Death is a nice division between T and M.

 

[Racecarlock]

So all the GTA games but with bully's characters and setting, basically. We kind of already have the GTA series, though. What would this add?

 

[Pink Gregory]

Raunchy dark humour?

We get enough of that anywhere else, to the point of it becoming tiresome.

The whole appeal of Bully is that it's cheeky schoolboy humour, just done by Rockstar. I'd find an M rated Bully bloody boring, to be honest. I can go anywhere else for cynical and clumsy social satire and violence, but I can't go anywhere else for pinging kids in fancy sweaters with stink bombs.

 

[Jamash]

It wouldn't be rated M.

Rockstar didn't restrain themselves and hold back on adult content to make a T rated game, them just made the game they wanted which then received a T rating.

There's no reason to think that Rockstar would want to make the game more graphic or violent than it already was (and it was exceptionally violent when you think about all the things you could do), or that it would take a lot to make it M rated in the eyes of the ESRB and that Rockstar would pull out all the stops with inappropriate content that wouldn't fit the game if it was going to receive a M rating.

Hypothetically, if Rockstar had to make the game receive a M rating (which isn't difficult considering the society the ESRB ratings reflect and the simple things that can get a M rating), then it would be exactly the same game, except that Jimmy would be able to drink alcohol and engage in full on fade-to-black sex and homosexual trysts, rather than just kissing.

 

[Treeberry]

Having it be an 'M' game would cheapen it in my opinion. More explicit language, sex, drugs and so on does not a mature game make. Bully/Canis Canem Edit is refreshing because it doesn't pander to the I'm So Mature (Not) crowd.

Incidentally it's the only Rockstar game I've finished and enjoyed from beginning to end.

 

[Mikejames]

If it was intended to be a much darker story, than sure, there'd probably be more drugs and explicit gang violence, as opposed to lobbing water balloons at people. But the lighter tone gave Bully its charm.

 

[Radoh]

Then Jack Thompson would have had something going for his argument, I guess.
But as said previously, if Bully had an M rating it would just be GTA but in a school setting, which would definitely have gotten more flack or whatever.
Plus I think the music would have suffered to make itself more edgy to fit the game, and that's just not okay, because Bully's music is kickass.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

Bully was good because it was childish and i think any deviation towards more realism would really kill the game. It's cartoon stereotyping of bullying is fine but a few more steps into 'real' bullying and it would be a horrible game.