Many players love Bully, often called 'GTA in school,' but during its development, its creators strongly doubted that such a project could turn out well. In a recent interview with IGN, Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser shared his memories.
Back then, Houser recounts, Bully's development was fraught with many different problems. Not just technical ones, but creative difficulties as well:
Development was tough. There were constant problems with the game — it wasn't easy. The concept was quite unusual, and we struggled with it. I wasn't sure if it would turn out well.
The developers long struggled to understand what this franchise was. They wondered: 'If you remove cars and weapons, what's left of the game? What will you do?' And at a certain point, Houser says, the lead designer 'started building a schedule and adding classes, and things started to move.'
One day, one of the designers came up with a joke — the ability to stick a 'Kick Me' sticker on other characters, and other NPCs could react to it and actually kick him. This became a turning point in development — that's when the creators began to understand that a project like Bully could work:
One of the designers made this thing: you could stick a sticker on a character's back with 'Kick Me' written on it, and an NPC would run up and kick the character. And when you see that it works, you think: 'This is a cool moment.' And then you realize: 'Okay, we're moving in the right direction.' I think that's the moment I always remember when I think: this franchise clearly wouldn't have worked within GTA — it's uninteresting. But with a child protagonist and events on a school scale — everything started to feel genuinely fun.
Now some players are waiting for Bully 2, but so far Rockstar hasn't announced anything, and the recent indie game Agefield High: Rock the School wasn't quite what fans were hoping for.