author: Miriam Moszczynska
Bully 2's Development was Turbulent - Rockstar Employees Share Details
Rumors about Bully 2 pop up in the media every now and then. However, according to Rockstar Games employees, the game has been in a deadlock ever since 2009.
- Work on Bully 2 did began, and employees had already prepared the first playable version;
- The project fell into disarray as Rockstar began removing staff from the project;
- Working conditions deteriorated at Rockstar New England, and employees often remained in the studio after hours even for several weeks;
- Currently there is no indication that work on Bully 2 is expected to resume.
We're not likely to see the highly anticipated sequel to Bully in the near future. According to former Rockstar employees who addressed the topic in an interview with Game Informer, the game was in development for a year or year and a half at most, after which the studio began ramoving developers from Bully 2.
Many Rockstar New England employees were reassigned to projects such as Max Payne 3 and Red Dead Redemption. One developer even admitted that the cracking glass effect - originally designed for Bully 2 - was used in the former of the two.
Aside from fewer hands to work with, the problem was a "never-ending" crunch. The people behind the first Bully admitted that they sometimes stayed late at work. With time, the problem escalated - employees were sitting at work for around a dozen hours a day, if not more, and the period of intensive game development at Rockstar could last up to six weeks. What is more, it happened that employees working overtime on one game were transferred to another project, where they again stayed at the company after hours.
Nevertheless the beginning of work on Bully 2 had a promising start, with almost the entire Rockstar New England studio working on the game - between 50 and 70 people.. The developers were excited about the vision of the world they wanted to create, though it wasn't particularly vast. One employee even admitted that at one point a polayable version of the game that offered 6 to 8 hours of fun was available. Other developers claim that if Bully 2 had received a little more attention, the game could have been released within two or three years..
As we know, that didn't happen, and the only thing that's come out about the sequel to Jimmy's adventures in over a decade is footage released by youtuber SWEGTA interviewing a former Rockstar New England employee. There was also buzz about the now-defunct page on Game Informer which suggested the release of Bully 2 or the Bully 2 Info Twitter profile, the founders of which have started losing hope for ever seing the sequel.
