The game's main character is 15-year-old Jimmy Hopkins, who must defend himself against school bullies at a fictional U.S. boarding school called Bullworth Academy, while dealing with characters ranging from nerds and jocks to authoritarian prefects. Weapons included baseball bats that break after several blows, stink bombs and bags of marbles that when strategically thrown will lay flat most pursuers.Florida Eleventh Judicial Circuit Case No. 06-16311, assigned to Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Ronald Friedman, seeks a court order directing Take-Two to cough up a copy of Bully to Thompson prior to its public release since a) Take-Two’s mild description of this game is wholly at odds with not only Take-Two’s earlier promotion of the extreme violence in the game but also at variance with actual exclusive “screenshots” from the game itself, and b) Take-Two has been recently whacked by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for fraud and deceit in the marketing of its violent video games.
In the latter regard, not only was Take-Two caught by the FTC fraudulently placing the sexually graphic “Hot Coffee mod” in its Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas game sold to children but also more recently placing nudity in its Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion games, which required a re-rating of that game from a Teen to a Mature age rating.
Recent Congressional testimony has proven that the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) age ratings of video games are a sham, and the entire ESRB system, as Senator Hillary Clinton said a year ago, “is broken.”
Thompson points out in this lawsuit that Take-Two is having fawning video game reviewers play the Bully game and pronounce it absolutely wonderful for children of all ages. This pre-release of Bully to individuals outside its corporate structure has foolishly opened up Take-Two to this lawsuit’s demand that the game be provided to an independent third-party who can fully and fairly analyze the entire game, especially in light of Take-Two’s history of corporate fraud. A Take-Two board member recently quit the company alleging to the Securities and Exchange Commission that Take-Two’s senior management has conspired to hide game content from the board. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau is now criminally investigating Take-Two for this fraud.
As recently as May of this year, Thompson drafted to the Miami-Dade School Board, which oversees the nation’s fourth largest school system, a Resolution unanimously passed asking Take-Two not to release Bully because it is, in effect, a Columbine simulator. Bullying experts in the US, the UK, and now Australia and New Zealand, are now calling upon Take-Two to stop the game’s release. Microsoft’s XBox, it has been recently announced, is not going to release Bully. Only Sony’s PS2 is left for Bully to train the next Klebold and Harris. A recent American Psychological Association Report finds a direct causal link between these violent games and teen violence.
If Bully is in fact a school violence simulation game, as all indications are that it is, then Thompson will proceed further and seek an injunction preventing the game’s release anywhere in the United States if and when an independent analysis of the game confirms educators’ and others’ worst fears.
Retail giant Wal-Mart is also a defendant in this lawsuit, as it is recklessly pre-selling Bully to children with no age rating having even been affixed to the game.
More articles about Bully