NEW YORK: A Florida judge ordered that a set of an unreleased video game by gaming company Take-Two Interactive Software be handed over to him for a review before its release Tuesday.
The circuit court judge in Miami-Dade county, however, refused to grant a partial injunction against sales of the game, titled Bully, set in a fictional private school, as sought by attorney Jack Thompson, a crusader against video game violence.
Thomson filed a motion in the court Wednesday asking the court "to grant some relief to stop the witless, crass release of this game in five days."
Thompson had pleaded in his lawsuit that "Bully" is like "Columbine simulator," referring to the 1999 school massacre in Colorado, and that it will educate minors on methods of bullying and school violence. He sought the court's intervention in declaring the game a "public nuisance."
Take-Two Interactive refused to comment on the development. However, the company described Bully on its website as a game where players will be able to "stand up to bullies, get picked on by teachers, play pranks, win or lose the girl and ultimately learn to navigate the obstacles of the worst school around, Bullworth Academy -- a corrupt and crumbling prep school with an uptight facade."
The game will be released for Sony's PlayStation 2 console.
According to game reviewers, who had access to using the game, Bully allows players to take the role of a troublesome schoolboy taking on bullies and teachers. The game does not feature any guns or killings though there are lots of fisticuffs. The weapons the protagonist use are a slingshot and a baseball bat.
Bully is another product of Take-Two's Rockstar Games, which had produced the controversial Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which was ordered to be pulled from retailers' shelves in 2005 for containing a hidden sex scene.
The Florida judge's decision comes amid a series of school violence, a debate on the influence of video games on children and several lawsuits.
Bully is priced $39.99.
Besides the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas controversy, Rockstar as well as Take Two Interactive are involved in pending lawsuits. In September, relatives of three people slain by a 14-year-old on newsman Sam Donaldson's New Mexico ranch sued Rockstar for $600 million, claiming the crimes would not have occurred had the teenager never played the violent game. Another case in Alabama blames "Grand Theft Auto" for the 2003 murders of two police officers and a dispatcher at a rural police department.
And incidentally Thompson is the attorney for both the plaintiffs.
