Ex-Rockstar Employee Claims that the Development Of Bully Felt like a "Little Hell"
The school-based action game Bully enjoys its well-earned place among the favorite titles of Rockstar Games; the creation itself was no less than a hellish ordeal. In an exclusive interview, a former employee refused to hold back about the extreme working conditions that prevailed at Rockstar Vancouver at that time.
Intense Crunch and All-Stress Conditions
In an interview with Retro Gamer concerning the development of Bully, Andrew Wood, in charge of environment artistry, discussed how the further the project advanced in time, extreme working hours were imposed on the employees.
- The people worked 18-hour shifts, 7-day weeks.
- Management eliminated lunch and instead just delivered food to the office to save on work time.
All this created an extremely stressful environment, leading to burnout and all sorts of endless internal conflicts, as Wood put it. Even Wood himself said, "Some breakdowns and nervous breakdowns happened to some individuals. It was hard to work in that environment, but I stuck through it knowing it was worth it-Bully."
Here are some pretty mixed memories, he says, describing it as "funny, strange, hellish, chaotic, and amazing."
Creative Origins and Canned Sequel
Wood had also revealed some interesting facts regarding the game's inception, that it is based on the childhood experiences of Rockstar's late co-founder Dan Houser.
This background to the making of the original Bully lends another angle to the recent commentary from Houser regarding a potential sequel. Houser specified that after working on Bully 2, the project was put on hold and eventually scrapped due to a lack of available resources and the inability of a small senior team to handle every desired project. Given the grueling nature of the first game's development, this all provides an interesting context regarding why a sequel would have been so hard to contemplate.
