Taking Bully Seriously?

simoniker writes "There's been plenty of controversy about Rockstar's PS2 title Bully, but does it actually have anything to teach players? Ian Bogost looks into whether the game actually has a social message, explaining: 'Taking Bully seriously means acknowledging that the game has something to say about the world, not just that the world has something to say about it. It means assessing how effectively the game tackles the topic of bullying and how meaningful its claims about it are.' His conclusion? 'Sweeping away all the dust that Bully left in the wake of its release, it's hard to defend the game, not because it might be a pubic nuisance or a danger to kids, but because it could have been so much more of a scathing critique of high school social politics than it turned out to be.'"