Female bullies are quite different from Male bullies most of the time, they are far more messed up.
"Female protagonist in Bully" bombcast e-mail
i'd play a Bully game with a female MC. It could actually be a pretty dark game if they went all the way with it because girl bullies can be pretty messed up.
@flindip said:
@mellotronrules: I didn't know of any tom boys that were constantly getting into fisticuffs, and usually didn't participate in the mischievous nature that comes with CERTAIN boys.
A tom boy is partakes in guys interests, but they don't necessarily act like dudes. Unless they trying to overcompensate.
well then your experience is different than mine, because i have a good friend who had a friendly chat with a police officer (in high school) after she got into it with a dude that was tormenting her. and she was very much a tomboy, but very much female at the same time. it isn't mutually exclusive. and as far as 'overcompensation' goes- that's a little condescending and judgmental, don't you think? people are people- i try not to make them fit into tidy little boxes labelled 'how a boy should act' and 'how a girl should act.'
In case TC wasn't aware, female bullies drive more students to suicide than their male counterparts.
@Zippedbinders said:
@Oldirtybearon said:
@I_smell: You're right, and I like that idea of making the game far more about social cliques and dealing with other student's perception of you. I think where this whole thing falls apart, however, is when you try to apply those design concepts onto an actual game. What made Bully so great was that sense of reverence and nostalgia the game had for that particular time period in a person's life. It was about your childhood, and for a lot of people it brought back warm and fuzzy feelings.
Contrast that with where others in this thread want Bully 2 to go, and I'm not sure anyone who enjoyed the first Bully would want to play, let alone enjoy, the second game. People don't want to be reminded of the drama in high school or the abuse some suffered or the isolation and the loneliness for others still. They want a game that makes them go "Yeah, those were good times" without sweeping the bad shit under the rug. What people in this thread are describing is nothing BUT bad shit.
Also, people are ignoring a fundamental reason Bully 2 wouldn't have a female protagonist - Dan Houser doesn't know how to write women. Pretty sure if he did, he would've done it by now.
I played Bully in college, and it reminded me nothing of what actual High School is like. Bully is the product of Scottish writers watching American movies about high school and then try to fit a narrative of an asshole kid hating everyone so much that they love him, hate him, and love him again.
My high school experience was more about art and chemistry than giving wedgies and running away from curfew prefects. Egging rich people's houses doesn't bring back ANY warm and fuzzy feelings.
It was still an awesome game. In my opinion, the reason Bully was great was because it juxtaposed a fantasy school setting with an open world with a decent hero's journey narrative. There's hardly any reason why a female version of that couldn't work. You're right about Dan though, only decent female Rockstar character I can think of is Bonnie from RDR.
So you never had friends in high school? You never hung out with them and talked about random things? Never did homework together? Never rode your bike after school to the "super secret hideout" to chill and have a good time? What you're describing is the video game part of Bully. The nostalgia and heart of that game lies in the character interaction and the structure of daily events.
And if you notice, I never once said that a female protagonist in Bully couldn't work. I said that the reasons people (like you) are listing to make it happen are wrong and near-sighted. You're asking to make the protagonist female just because, not giving two shits as to whether or not Rockstar can craft a good narrative with a point to make, like the rest of their games. If they can, or better yet, want to make Bully 2 with a female protagonist, they will. If not, they won't.
As a side bar, I'm getting sick and tired of retards thinking that men and women are interchangeable. They're not. Men and women are behaviorally very different, let alone physically. They both have unique perspectives on the world, and to ignore that and claim there is no real difference between a female and a male protagonist is asinine, let alone showing a startling lack of understanding when it comes to male and female perspectives.
@I_smell said:
@A_Cute_Squirtle said: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.@Hailinel said:
OP doesn't know much about female bullies.
Or females, apparently.
Stop having such a narrow view of gender, OP.
That's actually not true at all, not for where I went to school, nor for where I'm currently teaching. Fights didn't happen daily, but they are pretty equal parts male and female.
Female bullying sounds even more sinister, and it sounds great. Mean Girls the video game sounds pretty great. perhaps if the girl isn't the one kicking people's asses, there will be some kind of recruiting mechanic where she'll get other kids to kick ass and she manages it all.
I think a cool mechanic would be if they had some sort of rumor-starting system, and after you spread rumors, you have to remember the bullshit you made up if someone questions your story, and if you fuck up and say the wrong thing people will call you out on your bullshit. Lots of dialog trees and reputation points systems most likely.
@flindip said:
@Getz: Thats not what he said, and you know it.
You're right. What he said was closer to "Bully was about boy stuff, so how could they possibly make it about girl stuff?"
Which implies an obliviousness to the fact that girls bully each other too, just not in the same ways. Hence my snark.
@Oldirtybearon: tthere's a difference between saying there would probably be less fighting in a bully 2 with a female protagonist, and saying there would be no fighting at all like the OP is trying to do. No one wants bully 1 with a female protagonist, just that there is so much stuff that Rockstar could tap into, making it a game more about subterfuge/subtlety and less about fighting other girls, though that should still be an option. He's suggesting a game more like an adventure game than an open world action game, and I'm arguing that a female protagonist can fit into a world similar to Bully without it being unrealistic.
No it wasn't a rhetorical question, I was genuinely asking how they could make it about girl stuff.@flindip said:
@Getz: Thats not what he said, and you know it.
You're right. What he said was closer to "Bully was about boy stuff, so how could they possibly make it about girl stuff?"
Which implies an obliviousness to the fact that girls bully each other too, just not in the same ways. Hence my snark.
@Oldirtybearon said:
@Zippedbinders said:
@Oldirtybearon said:
@I_smell: You're right, and I like that idea of making the game far more about social cliques and dealing with other student's perception of you. I think where this whole thing falls apart, however, is when you try to apply those design concepts onto an actual game. What made Bully so great was that sense of reverence and nostalgia the game had for that particular time period in a person's life. It was about your childhood, and for a lot of people it brought back warm and fuzzy feelings.
Contrast that with where others in this thread want Bully 2 to go, and I'm not sure anyone who enjoyed the first Bully would want to play, let alone enjoy, the second game. People don't want to be reminded of the drama in high school or the abuse some suffered or the isolation and the loneliness for others still. They want a game that makes them go "Yeah, those were good times" without sweeping the bad shit under the rug. What people in this thread are describing is nothing BUT bad shit.
Also, people are ignoring a fundamental reason Bully 2 wouldn't have a female protagonist - Dan Houser doesn't know how to write women. Pretty sure if he did, he would've done it by now.
I played Bully in college, and it reminded me nothing of what actual High School is like. Bully is the product of Scottish writers watching American movies about high school and then try to fit a narrative of an asshole kid hating everyone so much that they love him, hate him, and love him again.
My high school experience was more about art and chemistry than giving wedgies and running away from curfew prefects. Egging rich people's houses doesn't bring back ANY warm and fuzzy feelings.
It was still an awesome game. In my opinion, the reason Bully was great was because it juxtaposed a fantasy school setting with an open world with a decent hero's journey narrative. There's hardly any reason why a female version of that couldn't work. You're right about Dan though, only decent female Rockstar character I can think of is Bonnie from RDR.
So you never had friends in high school? You never hung out with them and talked about random things? Never did homework together? Never rode your bike after school to the "super secret hideout" to chill and have a good time? What you're describing is the video game part of Bully. The nostalgia and heart of that game lies in the character interaction and the structure of daily events.
And if you notice, I never once said that a female protagonist in Bully couldn't work. I said that the reasons people (like you) are listing to make it happen are wrong and near-sighted. You're asking to make the protagonist female just because, not giving two shits as to whether or not Rockstar can craft a good narrative with a point to make, like the rest of their games. If they can, or better yet, want to make Bully 2 with a female protagonist, they will. If not, they won't.
As a side bar, I'm getting sick and tired of retards thinking that men and women are interchangeable. They're not. Men and women are behaviorally very different, let alone physically. They both have unique perspectives on the world, and to ignore that and claim there is no real difference between a female and a male protagonist is asinine, let alone showing a startling lack of understanding when it comes to male and female perspectives.
I wasn't aggressive toward you at all, I provided a counter point to your notion of "warm and fuzzy memories" because the events of Bully did nothing to mirror my own experiences. Yes I had friends, yes I hung out with them, no I never did homework with them, I never rode a bike around and had a "super secret hideout." None of those things are what made Bully special though, Jimmy doesn't do any fucking homework over the course of that game. My last part wasn't even really directed at you, but was more of my summation on why I liked Bully, and why I think a female protagonist is feasible. I don't really care whether they make it a female character or not (in this game that doesn't exist) I've merely jumped in to this thread to point out the sexist bullshit the OP was saying. I've done that, and there are plenty of others who feel the same way.
But sure keep putting words in my mouth. Grr, I'm taking things the wrong way because I'm in a heated debate about things. Grr I say!
The main character in the first game wasn't actually a bully, but a troubled student. A girl could work, though it doesn't matter, clearly the bomb crew trying to be politically correct - what matters is the developer's ability to find a satisfactory main character.
Just for the record there are female gangster's too. Here's a list of 10 notorious ladies who were involved in or ran their own organized crime syndicates (the last two are a bit "iffy" by modern standards but work in their historical context).
Girls can be bullies, too. Beyond the typical physical violence, some of their bullying can be worse since it targets the victims self-worth.
Normally I'm the kind of person who chooses to play a girl when given the opportunity, so when I heard it on the Bombcast I thought it was a good idea at first, but OP is totally right, the kind of game they'd have to make would be completely different, Male and Female bullies are different beasts. Mean Girls was an alright movie, and I can see how that would translate narratively, but I don't see how that kind of story translates to gameplay at all. I can imagine a dialogue wheel where you choose one of three bitchy responses, but in terms of actually walking around the school doing missions or whatever I can't even think of what you could do, and that leads me to believe there's not very much potential in the idea. Then again, I've never played Bully so idk. I just think the things typically associated with female bullying wouldn't be very fun to do in a video game, and Rockstar is not exactly known for bucking stereotypes.
@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?
It would be a very different game, but it is definitely a great idea for a game. I even said "man... like Mean Girls" a few seconds before they brought it up themselves. It would be a little less about shoving people in garbage cans and probably more about relationship choices/cliques and stuff, but there is definitely a lot of room to make a great game there.
Would be a different direction for Rockstar, that's for sure.
@Bourbon_Warrior said:
I'd rather just have Jimmy : The College Years
College age dudes who go around punching everyone in the face to to prison not the principals office. Wouldn't that just end up being GTA?
I kind of agree with you, a female character could easily be made into a fighting bully who kicks ass however the problem wouldn't be with the protagonist but the rest of the world. Unless the game is set in like a female juvenile detention center it is really unlikely there will be that many of physically intimidating female bullies/enemies, thus forcing you to fight male students which then brings up the issue of a bunch of guys ganging up to fight a girl which even if the girl can kick their asses is still gonna be viewed really badly. The main aspects seen in female bullies is emotional manipulation, which is a subject far too touchy at this point in time, with a male you can have a stereotypical bully who beats up people and it's more easily accepted.
A female protagonist should be able to do most of the things a male protagonist could do the social views around a female bullies just make the game way to difficult to make fun while also not being accused of being misogynistic. In my opinion a better idea would be to have a strong female bully as one of the antagonist, it could showcase how girls can be bullies too and adds a strong female presence while also giving room for stealth/espionage missions due to the whole "can't hit a girl" concept. As a game I just can't see a Bully game being helmed by a female protagonist, while the concept is conpletely valid, in this type of game it just wouldn't be possible to accomplish making a good game while also avoiding pissing off tons of people.
It doesn't need to be like the first bully. It'd be Mean Girls the game. But not like the second movie, obviously just the first one.
Not that bully wouldn't work as well with a girl, cause who cares about stereotypes.
I just want a Mean Girls game you guys.
@Zella said:
I kind of agree with you, a female character could easily be made into a fighting bully who kicks ass however the problem wouldn't be with the protagonist but the rest of the world. Unless the game is set in like a female juvenile detention center it is really unlikely there will be that many of physically intimidating female bullies/enemies, thus forcing you to fight male students which then brings up the issue of a bunch of guys ganging up to fight a girl which even if the girl can kick their asses is still gonna be viewed really badly. The main aspects seen in female bullies is emotional manipulation, which is a subject far too touchy at this point in time, with a male you can have a stereotypical bully who beats up people and it's more easily accepted.
A female protagonist should be able to do most of the things a male protagonist could do the social views around a female bullies just make the game way to difficult to make fun while also not being accused of being misogynistic. In my opinion a better idea would be to have a strong female bully as one of the antagonist, it could showcase how girls can be bullies too and adds a strong female presence while also giving room for stealth/espionage missions due to the whole "can't hit a girl" concept. As a game I just can't see a Bully game being helmed by a female protagonist, while the concept is conpletely valid, in this type of game it just wouldn't be possible to accomplish making a good game while also avoiding pissing off tons of people.
Mmmmhmm for some reason I think the prospect of a game as a female bully gathering a pack of cronies to push around a solo girl and subject her to emotional torment day in day out till she breaks (one of the more common forms of female bullying I've heard of here) might actually go down worse than a game solely about physical violence.
Unless Bully wanted to get really gritty and talk about teenage girl gang members who walk about with bricks and stuff and have troubled pasts.
How's this for the story line for the second bully regardless of gender roles
1. Act 1 - comes to new school
2. Act 2 - Juvenile camp or Summer camp
3.Act 3 - back to school ready for graduation or something
Depending on the choice you make in the first act, you get sent to juve or a summer camp. Say your participation in ruining a school event, either you blow up the school banner or not.
In the second act, if you are in Juvenile camp, you get to see the worst of the bunch, so female fights might be more plausible here. In both camps, there are still choices to be made and you can still change depending on the way you respond to the activities there; you can learn to be good in the Juvenile camp or you can sink other people's rafts in the Summer camp.
And finally in the last act, its graduation and again depending on how you play in the previous act you can graduate or ruin the day for others and not graduate.
The main protaganist doesn't need to be of a specific gender if the premise is interesting enough, though Rockstar might not give players the choice of selecting the camps ( seems more like CDproject Red thing ).
@Oldirtybearon said:
As a side bar, I'm getting sick and tired of retards thinking that men and women are interchangeable. They're not. Men and women are behaviorally very different, let alone physically. They both have unique perspectives on the world, and to ignore that and claim there is no real difference between a female and a male protagonist is asinine, let alone showing a startling lack of understanding when it comes to male and female perspectives.
I thought the interchangable gender of the MC in Saints Row 2 and Saints Row 3 worked just fine. Pretty much the same for the Mass Effect series too. The expected 'norm' of men and women's behaviours can be very different, but when you bring it down to a specific individual, I don't see why they can't just write the character they want to write and say 'it's just how they are' if there's something about them that doesn't quite fit their gender's stereotype. There are always those that don't fit, in whatever way, in the real world. The suspension of disbelief doesn't have to be too great to pull that off.
Surely, and this is what I thought when I heard the e-mail, the appeal of a female-led Bully game would be to capture the bitchiness of teenage high school girls. Sure, you have the hallmarks of the original there but I thought it would be damn interesting if Rockstar took a look and at venomous comments and glaring looks tossed back and forth at girls' schools.
Female bullies were scary motherfuckers in my day, more so than guys
They didnt just fight.. they literally tortured each girl they fought. I remember seeing a fight between girls on some uneven gravel, the one girl dragged this girls face on the ground till she saw blood. Scared the shit out of me. Her face was fucked, but she still fought.
So, no, i dont think a simple gender swop would work. Building the character up from scratch and making the game with the female character in mind would be better.
@McGhee: yeah i totally saw this one girl pull some of the other girls hair out and scratch her face! like omg! it totally reminded me of when my friend got his jaw broken and had the bone sticking out through the skin! im sorry but i have to agree with OP tis' a stupid idea.
@GooieGreen: Ok. this is the common misconception of people who don't play video games as a whole and especialy people who prejudicate rockstar games. every single Rockstar title excluding GTA 1-3 has had the protagonist be like a model of society with good morals and for the most part a up front no nonsense personality who just happens to get screwed over by a gang or cartel wanting to play on his personality. bully is no exception in fact i find it so ironic that Jimmy has better morals than most kids i know.
they just see "HES HAVING SEX WITH A PROSTITUTE KILLING'ER WITH A BASEBALL BAT BAN DEATH FROM MY CHILDS BRAIN"
people need to stop being so close minded and understand that violence is part of culture and of life as a whole. im not saying that you need to take your kids to see the latest SAW. But, maybe, when/if you buy them a mature game sit down and explain that its a game and its all just in this games little world. explain that the pedestrians arn't real life people but just a program created by metal and electricity watch your son/daughter play the game and encourage them for doing good stuff like completing vigilante missions or in bullys case any time jimmy stands up for pretty much every main character. Maybe i just lucked out and have a son who just "gets it".
if bully 2 actually did come out would it stir up another shit storm? my guess is yes. but i really hope the fans of rockstar and the original would also speak up for it. its a good game. a damn good game. and i would hate to see it get morphed or altered because rockstars trying to appeal to a more close minded, feministic audience.
@chibbix: There has never been a moral character; a true and true character that is innocent in a Rockstar game. They are filled with tropes like "dude who wants to straighten up and fly right but gets stuck in the game one more time". The problem is that there is always an incongruency between how the character emotes in a situation and his actual mission. Even though Jimmy wasn't like the hyperbolic jocks that made his school a horrible place to be, he still ran around with a bottle rocket gun and made out with people as a game mechanic. I don't remember these things being player choice (at best they were achievement-wise) but rather a necessary way to progress through the game. You couldn't be passive; you still had to be a bully to other bullies.
You're also expecting a LOT from parents. I think the overwhelming majority of parents are capable of sitting down with their children and being a functional role model, but many still will not. So it is much easier said than done, I'm afraid. It will, as always, fall on the teachers, school counselors, and other supportive services to help this child develop in the face of violent media everywhere.
Bully was mainly about respect so having a female protagonist would mean that fighting wouldn't be able to work as the main story mechanic. I'm not saying their couldn't be fighting. I'm just saying you'd have to find other ways to win over the cliques. Not only that if she's going to be an everywoman character it doesn't make sense for her to beat up half the football team. My plot for a female bully is that she walks through the halls one day and her boyfriend mercilessly starts beating up a nerd for refusing to do his homework. The girl gets furious and gives her boyfriend a black eye. Her boyfriend is the star football player and the principal only seems to notice you beating him up. You spend the rest of your time in school in in school suspension and meet a guy who also has disdain for your prior boyfriend and everyone else in the school. You fume over the bullies at the school and you live out each day a la persona as new days progress. You discover new bullies throughout the school and in your daily life. You meet once in in school suspension every day to discuss things that have happened around the school and bullies that you have the option of punishing. However, you can decide to talk to everyone that's involved in this game including the bullies, your parter in crime, and the people being bullied. By paying close attention youll be able to figure who the real bullies at the school are and this unlocks new people to talk to. The goal of this game would be to go after bullies instead of becoming the queen of the cliques but by talking with people and doing missions for them you can gain respect from certain cliques which although not required which is required for people to not report you to the principal. Unlike in Bully when your chased by the authorities that keep track of your clothing and will ask people the name of people walking by matching the description. If you have enough respect within a clique the people in the clique won't report you and you can run away unscathed.
Gameplay Weapons and Activities: pepper spray, makeup mirror, slingshot, cherry bombs, vespa,
insults: depending on your clique affiliation and position in the game you may be insulted. You get 4 choices and a tone button. You also only have a certain amount of time to respond. the same is true for conversations like if you were going to tell a joke. the expression on the characters face will change depending on what you say. Each character will have a precanned phrase theyll say if they begin to take a shine to you or if their in tears. You can get missions from people you win over by insulting them.
Missions: The game works in days and unlike bully you don't stay in the same school all day. In order to do missions you have to figure out a way to distract the teacher or make an excuse to leave. If you make an excuse to leave your mission has to be done in a certain amount of time or you get expelled and it's game over. To help you leave can have five students one lets you know when you need to come back to class, 4 others make a specific distraction like projectile vomiting in class. only certain students can do certain distractions. you control your character with the analog stick and the distractions with the 4 main controller buttons that you assign to the students. You don't have to assign someone to let you know when to come back to class. However, if your teacher notices your missing you have to start over from the beginning of the mission. As the games atmosphere becomes more dramatic it gets harder and harder to leave the room this way. You can also do favors for a teacher that will give you a hall pass. He's a main story character and later hits on. After spurning his advances you lose the hall pass later in the game.
Missions:
your stalker: If you use the makeup mirror you will see an in game easter egg and mission. While your in the halls their is always someone following you. The makeup mirror is required for the first mission and the idea is that hopefully the person will become evident. by pressing the trigger buttons you can scroll through all the people behind you and a label as well as things they've done around the school will show up. If you scroll to the last person in the makeup mirror. It will say stalker. Know activities:stalker. If you press a when scrolling through the makeup mirror you can talk to the person you selected but not authority figures that are chasing you. If you try to talk to authority figure through the makeup mirror this way she will say. I don't wanna go back to prison or I don't feel like going to jail right now.
@assinass said:
It'd be the prequel to this mass-murdering psychopath Tomb Raider
Hate all you want but the executions in Tomb Raider were brutal and nice to pull off. During particularly nasty and intense encounters watching Lara scramble to a mook and plant her goddamn pick axe into his dome just heightened the stakes of the whole ordeal for me. Its violence is brutal but it doesn't fall into the Gears trap of becoming comedic in the process. I found that refreshing.
@assinass said:
It'd be the prequel to this mass-murdering psychopath Tomb Raider
Hate all you want but the executions in Tomb Raider were brutal and nice to pull off. During particularly nasty and intense encounters watching Lara scramble to a mook and plant her goddamn pick axe into his dome just heightened the stakes of the whole ordeal for me. Its violence is brutal but it doesn't fall into the Gears trap of becoming comedic in the process. I found that refreshing.
Refreshing? Tons of games have uberviolent kills that are not comedic. Max Payne 3. You should try out Treyarch's Call of Duty games lol.
@assinass: What you linked to is called torture, which is different from the frantic, violent nature of the encounters in Tomb Raider. I personally don't want to torture people in video games, but I don't mind having an intense, violent altercation on par with that nude knife fight in A History of Violence.
TL;DR Violence is great when it means something, and it means something in Tomb Raider, not Call of Duty.
People should watch that direct to tv movie Girl Fight wich is more accuarate in showing how girls can be "mean" and bully others way more than Mean Girls...I mean that just a goofy comedy movie where some of the characters do really dumb stuff, is really weird to see people asking for a "real" portray of female bullies by comparing it to a comedy film... but whatever this thread is old.
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