"Female protagonist in Bully" bombcast e-mail

Someone wrote into the bombcast and said "Hey there's no women in GTA, how about if they made a Bully 2, and it was that? 
And everyone nodded and said "yeah that makes total sense!"
 
I must be missing something here, cos I don't get it. Things I remember about Bully: gettin in fights, running from prefects, bicycles, football, fireworks, frat house initiation, playing Qixx, Gary.
That's mostly schoolBOY stuff, not schoolGIRL stuff. I can't imagine a Bully 2 where you're a school girl, unless you change the whole lifestyle of the game and made it nothing like Bully. Or play as a girl who learns to box and then runs around uppercutting greasers which CALL ME OLD FASHIONED sounds like a pretty stupid compromise.
 
What am I missing?

What is the hallmark of bully? I think it's just a open world game in a boarding school. So it won't have much of the stuff you mentioned but it could have entirely new stuff that fits it fine as well.

Don't know if OP is a troll. Going to assume he/she isn't.

There are plenty of female bullies that could do everything you described with aplomb.

Bullying isn't a dude-only activity.

Not only is bullying not only reserved for males, but the premise would obviously be altered if the character was female. It would work just fine.

You are missing quite a lot it seems, nothing wrong with a female bully.

Don't know if OP is a troll. Going to assume he/she isn't.

There are plenty of female bullies that could do everything you described with aplomb.

Bullying isn't a dude-only activity.

Not only is bullying not only reserved for males, but the premise would obviously be altered if the character was female. It would work just fine.

@I_smell: you also had a jetpack in San Andreas; they don't exactly have to bring everything from one game to the other

Well if it is something like Mean Girls with a Bully twist that would be awesome!

Female bully would work just fine.None of what you said makes sense.

There are pretty tough girls out there even in movies and media. I'm sure that Rockstar will be able to write a situation that makes sense for all of your concerns. I'd be all in for a Bully 2 with a female protagonist.

Fighting, pranks, sports, and doing dumb shit isn't gender exclusive dude.

Well if it is something like Mean Girls with a Bully twist that would be awesome!

It would be a bit different. And that would be okay.

@MariachiMacabre said:

@NoobSauceG7

Well if it is something like Mean Girls with a Bully twist that would be awesome!

"Lindsay Lohan to reprise her 'Mean Girls' role in Bully 2" I mean...it's not like she's doing anything else these days.

Unless you count sucking the chode for drugs anything.

@I_smell said:

@FluxWaveZ said:

Not only is bullying not only reserved for males, but the premise would obviously be altered if the character was female. It would work just fine.

Yeah I wanna hear how it'd work, cos I can't picture it.

What do you mean? What is there to picture? A girl throwing stinkbombs, shooting fireworks at nerds, racing away from the cops on her bike/skateboard, going to classes to improve skills, pranking frat girls and generally engaged in a story of high school hijinx is too hard to imagine?

Fighting, pranks, sports, and doing dumb shit isn't gender exclusive dude.

OP doesn't know much about female bullies.

@I_smell said:

@JasonR86 said:

Fighting, pranks, sports, and doing dumb shit isn't gender exclusive dude.

So you fight all the other girls to win over every clique in the school like the first game? Is that what all you guys are picturing?

I ain't no game designer! I'm just saying stereotyped gender roles shouldn't stop a creator from creating a game however they want. Especially when there are such clear contradictions to these norms.

@I_smell said:

@JasonR86 said:

Fighting, pranks, sports, and doing dumb shit isn't gender exclusive dude.

So you fight all the other girls to win over every clique in the school like the first game? Is that what all you guys are picturing?

I would hope they could be a little different with their plotting, but considering this is rockstar I have my doubts, so yeah I don't know why that wouldn't work (maybe more subterfuge than the original bully but that's because Jimmy was a thug and an idiot)

@Hailinel said:

OP doesn't know much about female bullies.

Or females, apparently.

Stop having such a narrow view of gender, OP.

OP doesn't know much about female bullies.

@I_smell said:

@JasonR86 said:

Fighting, pranks, sports, and doing dumb shit isn't gender exclusive dude.

So you fight all the other girls to win over every clique in the school like the first game? Is that what all you guys are picturing?

My good friend, have you ever seen two school girls fight? That stuff is pretty hardcore.

@Brodehouse said:

@Hailinel

OP doesn't know much about female bullies.

Press A to make backhanded compliment about targeted girl's clothes. Mash RT to subtly imply that targeted girl is fat.

Rotate the stick to pull her hair.

It's precisely the change in convention of what you'd expect from a Bully game that makes having a female protagonist such a compelling idea.

they'd probably have to set it in female only boarding school though. They really should have said the original Bully in one honestly because there was honestl like only one main character that was female in all of the cliques at most and it was really weird.

I seem to remember there being discussion along these lines on the Bombcast years ago, but I can't for the life of me recall exactly when. The guys were talking adoringly about Bully (as they are often wont to do), and somehow they landed on their ideal Bully 2 scenario being playing as a female protagonist at a lakeside summer camp.  
I'm not going to sit here and try to tell anyone that I know what goes on in a woman's (or anyone's) mind, but I do think that this could be a really interesting take on what Rockstar did with Bully. In that long-ago Bombcast, they made mention of there being less overt physical bullying, with more psychological torment being inflicted by, and upon, the player. I think, if done right, a dev like Rockstar could really knock a premise like that out of the park. Moreover, it would be interesting to play as a female protagonist, outside of the more cartoonish Lara Crofts, Bayonettas, or even a female Commander Shepard (the latter of which I have played extensively, but the gender politics going on in the Mass Effect universe as dictated by my female character seemed mostly, if not wholly, within my own mind as I thought through the ramifications of my actions, as opposed to the game being tailored to a female character, and whatever gameplay nuances that situation could surface).

I saw some pretty damn good chick fights when I was in high school.

@I_smell said:

@JasonR86 said:

Fighting, pranks, sports, and doing dumb shit isn't gender exclusive dude.

So you fight all the other girls to win over every clique in the school like the first game? Is that what all you guys are picturing?

And you're picturing that Bully 2 would have the exact same plot as Bully 1?

@RedLeader: Pretty sure that was a 2012 Bombcast where Partick stated that Bully was the best Rockstar game.

A female bully who's more conniving with pulling off better pranks on nerds and such would be more interesting.

@Hailinel said:

OP doesn't know much about female bullies.

Or females, apparently.

Stop having such a narrow view of gender, OP.

During that one Bombcast where they were talking about settings for a new Bully, I just kept thinking Japanese High School. Basically just Persona 4 but an open world action game.

@Cold_Wolven said:

A female bully who's more conniving with pulling off better pranks on nerds and such would be more interesting.

Yep. Instead of relying on brute force if there was a lot of combat involved, she'd make better use of tools.

During that one Bombcast where they were talking about settings for a new Bully, I just kept thinking Japanese High School. Basically just Persona 4 but an open world action game.

Japanese high school girls are pretty ferocious

@Bocam said:

Japanese high school girls are pretty ferocious

It'll probably be in America so that doesn't matter when talking about Bully 2.

Deciding we make it less about whacking each other with cricket bats, what is the gameplay of "being conniving" and "psychological torment"?
 
What gameplay mechanics are you guys thinking of when you say that? Cos I can't come up with anything that doesn't just look silly. Is it DIALOGUE TREES?

@Brodehouse

During that one Bombcast where they were talking about settings for a new Bully, I just kept thinking Japanese High School. Basically just Persona 4 but an open world action game.

Sort of like Kenka Bancho?

@I_smell said:

@A_Cute_Squirtle said:

@Hailinel said:

OP doesn't know much about female bullies.

Or females, apparently.

Stop having such a narrow view of gender, OP.

Look- schoolboys will punch each other straight in the face til one gives up, that can happen every other week. If you went to a school where 13-15 year old girls will just punch the fuck out of each other on a weekly basis, you are the outlier. I'm not like Old-Man-Sexism here, I'm pretty confident in saying there's more boys joining the wrestling team in school than there are girls.

I agree with you by the way, I have no idea why everyone here is acting like it's not a little out of place, I guess that article Patrick wrote got infested deep in people's brains! I'm not saying it wouldn't work, but it'd be a totally different game to what Bully was.

The idea of it being set in Japan is interesting but unlikely. All of Rockstar's previous games have been strongly focused on American culture and I can't see that changing anytime soon.

I'm a male. I never punched anyone in school. In fact, there were never any fights. I also never tried out for any sports. Bully was a lie. Because all fiction should fit my own experiences.

The premise of the e-mail was a bit thin, suggesting there was a "kerfuffle" over GTA V not having a female protagonist.

Yes, it's important that we try to portray men and women in media, in a way that makes neither side seem like incapable jerks or underwear models in distress, and yes it's important that we realize that both video games and the video game industry has a very large male audience and a male dominated industry.

No it does not have jack shit to do whether the protagonist of GTA V is a woman or not. Having a female protagonist is not simply a merit in and of itself, regardless of the developer or game, nor in Bully 2.

@I_smell said:

Someone wrote into the bombcast and said "Hey there's no women in GTA, how about if they made a Bully 2, and it was that? And everyone nodded and said "yeah that makes total sense!" I must be missing something here, cos I don't get it. Things I remember about Bully: gettin in fights, running from prefects, bicycles, football, fireworks, frat house initiation, playing Qixx, Gary. That's mostly schoolBOY stuff, not schoolGIRL stuff. I can't imagine a Bully 2 where you're a school girl, unless you change the whole lifestyle of the game and made it nothing like Bully. Or play as a girl who learns to box and then runs around uppercutting greasers which CALL ME OLD FASHIONED sounds like a pretty stupid compromise. What am I missing?

Back when I was a kid, when games were way better, sequels weren't just a "second chance" for developers to do the same thing they did the first time but better. They were tenuously connected to the original game, but using a whole different perspective (sometimes literally).

I think setting up Bully 2 in a context where a lot of the action of Bully 1 doesnt fit sounds like a fantastic direction for a sequel.

That being said, I don't think the people whining about their not being a female protagonist in GTA 4 were doing it for feminist reasons, I think they were doing it for sexual reasons. I think they're the people who spent hours looking for the girl on the GTA4 posters inside GTA4 and complaining when she wasn't there, and who play MMORPGs as female avatars because "If I'm going to spend hours looking at a characters butt..."

@I_smell said:

@A_Cute_Squirtle said:

@Hailinel said:

OP doesn't know much about female bullies.

Or females, apparently.

Stop having such a narrow view of gender, OP.

Look- schoolboys will punch each other straight in the face til one gives up, that can happen every other week. If you went to a school where 13-15 year old girls will just punch the fuck out of each other on a weekly basis, you are the outlier. I'm not like Old-Man-Sexism here, I'm pretty confident in saying there's more boys joining the wrestling team in school than there are girls.

I agree with you by the way, I have no idea why everyone here is acting like it's not a little out of place, I guess that article Patrick wrote got infested deep in people's brains! I'm not saying it wouldn't work, but it'd be a totally different game to what Bully was.

Female protagonist for Bully 2 means pillow fights yay!

I'm going to assume that nobody here is in education or counseling, but from my experience gender has nothing to do with bullying. It happens so much more outside of school and off the streets, and if it is physical it will typically involve younger kids. A modern Bully game would likely play up the dialogue options more, regardless of gender. Although I'm not a fan of Rockstar, they have done well in their previous games to but some frame of reference on their realities. Presenting a new generation to Bully would probably result in a lot more negative press than they are used to (which says something) so they would have to be very careful in every aspect of this game. Last thing we need are more "violence training" accusations from CNN and FOX.

Queen Bitch Rise and her Bitchettes Yukiko and Chie can fuck your shit up.

I'm going to assume that nobody here is in education or counseling, but from my experience gender has nothing to do with bullying. It happens so much more outside of school and off the streets, and if it is physical it will typically involve younger kids. A modern Bully game would likely play up the dialogue options more, regardless of gender. Although I'm not a fan of Rockstar, they have done well in their previous games to but some frame of reference on their realities. Presenting a new generation to Bully would probably result in a lot more negative press than they are used to (which says something) so they would have to be very careful in every aspect of this game. Last thing we need are more "violence training" accusations from CNN and FOX.

Having a female protagonist in a Bully sequel that is the same as the first game in both gameplay and story will come off as arbitrary, especially when bullying, while far from gender exclusive, is more associated with boys. But at this point they're going to have to do something different if it was a boy anyway so either way they can't make the same game. I always thought the name came from the school, Bullworth academy, so maybe they can play with that a bit. Besides the best part of Bully was the immersion of being in school and the characters/story.

Lots of misconceptions and generalizations going on in this thread. yeesh

@I_smell said:

Also the thought that's in the back of my mind for this whole thread- that I kind of hoped we'd get to right on Page 1- does anyone even WANT to verbally abuse kids in a game?

Nope, at least I hope not. Abuse and rampant violence are two different beasts. I would just feel bad bullying people for no reason. Doesn't sound like a good time in the least.