Rockstar is gearing up for the launch of GTA 6, however, in fact, Grand Theft Auto isn’t the one collection the developer is understood for. Alongside the likes of the beloved Purple Useless Redemption video games, there are various followers of one other open-world journey from the studio: Bully.
Launched in 2006 and initially identified in Europe as Canis Canem Edit, Bully tells the story of unruly scholar Jimmy Hopkins getting out and in of bother throughout a yr at Bullworth Academy. A smaller-scale, much less X-rated model of GTA, it launched to essential acclaim. However the highway in direction of launch was removed from simple.
“The event was arduous,” former Rockstar VP and author of Bully, Dan Houser, stated in a brand new interview as a part of our IGN30 Icons Collection. “The sport was in bother all the time. It was tough. It was an out-there idea. We have been fighting it. I wasn’t positive it was going to be any good. We actually wished it to come back collectively. It was actually enjoyable afterwards as a result of it got here collectively rather well. The workforce did an important job. It was a kind of actually sturdy sport on the finish. It form of got here collectively very late.”
Houser went on to clarify why the event of Bully proved such a problem, coming because it did simply over a yr after GTA: San Andreas. “New IP may be very worrying since you’re doing one thing that nobody’s ever accomplished earlier than,” he stated. “And significantly that sport, there was all of this controversy round it to do with the title, or folks misunderstood it once they’d by no means seen it. So I feel one of many challenges with that sport was it by no means received the eye it deserved. We have been too targeted on making an attempt to at the very least get folks to inventory it or to not protest it earlier than it even got here out.”
The mid-2000s was an period when controversy adopted Rockstar video games every time one was about to hit retailer cabinets, whether or not or not it’s the snuff-film-fuelled ultraviolence of Manhunt, or the intercourse minigame mod, Scorching Espresso, uncovered within the code of San Andreas. Bully was no totally different, with some members of the general public apprehensive about how its specific content material would translate into a faculty setting.
“There was big hysteria round it,” Houser said. “We needed to spend most of 2006 diffusing it, so we could not positively promote the sport in the way in which we usually would’ve accomplished. I feel that did not assist it. I imply, that was the identical time as Scorching Espresso, and it felt like issues have been imploding. It was very worrying. And simply go to work every day, surprise who’s protesting you that day, and hope that issues can shake out correctly. I wasn’t immediately concerned. Fortunately, I used to be simply kind of proper off to the aspect, and wasn’t immediately concerned in organizing most of that stuff. However it was actually worrying for the folks concerned.”
However it wasn’t simply exterior pressures that made the event of Bully tough. Rockstar additionally needed to wrestle with find out how to make its type of open-world action-adventure work from the angle of a young person. The varsity setting meant driving automobiles and taking pictures weapons needed to be parked to 1 aspect — two important gameplay mechanics of any GTA.
“Builders have been fighting what the IP was, and we might made some modifications, and a few folks had moved on the market from New York, and it was beginning to get a bit higher, but it surely was nonetheless actually struggling,” revealed Houser. “It was actually, properly, if you happen to take away the automobiles and you are taking away the weapons, what’s the sport? What are you doing? And the lead designer, who was actually gifted, started to place within the schedule and started to place within the classes, and it was beginning to get there.
“Then, one of many designers put this factor the place you possibly can stick a Publish-it notice on the again of a personality that stated ‘Kick me’ on it. Then an NPC would run up and kick them. And simply seeing that work, you are like, that is an important second. So you then’re, okay, we’re beginning to get someplace. So I feel that second was most likely after I at all times bear in mind going, this IP that would not work in a GTA, clearly; it isn’t attention-grabbing. However as a child, and immediately it was the size of the varsity and the size of a child’s life, it began to really feel actually enjoyable.”
Bully was certainly very enjoyable. A lot in order that followers have been begging for a sequel ever since. Whereas concepts for a follow-up have been as soon as floated round at Rockstar, Houser revealed to IGN in 2025 that it never got off the ground due to “bandwidth issues.”
I do miss the times while you’d get a brand new Rockstar open world to roam round in yearly, however I suppose sooner or later I’ve to surrender craving for the PS2 period. It was 20 years in the past, in any case. Fortunately, Grand Theft Auto 6 is just weeks away from launch.
For extra on GTA 6, you’ll be able to learn our full interview with Rockstar co-studio head Rob Nelson, how the game will tackle the current political climate, and why Dan Houser says he won’t be playing it.
Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can primarily be discovered skulking round open world video games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing on the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Comply with him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.