Bully SE: Removed BETA Mission
This is a fictional horror story. This didn't actually happen
I remember about a year ago when I was settled as a Gameplay tester at RockstarGames.
My job basicly involved trying every single function out. Yes, it did get a bit annoying now and then. But I was still fascinated by how much effort they put into every game they made.
I recived an E-Mail from Sam Houser. He told me that I had been chosen to test out Bully. I had to agree to a bunch of Terms & Conditions. In short: I was not allowed to share any of my experience with anyone during the making of the game.
So after a week or so, I recived a .zip archive sent to me from the guys at RockstarGames.
I unpacked it and I noticed something strange. Just an .exe file. Usually games are divided in a bunch of other files. So I messaged Sam and told him about this.
While I was waiting for a response, I thought that I might as well give it a try.
I launched the file and nothing happened for a minute or two. Later on my screen flashed a few times so as I suspected, the program launched.
A basic Main Menu appeared. White background and black labels such as "Insert settings option here" and so on. Obviously Rockstar hadn't even gotten close to the final product, so I decided to give it a shot.
I selected the only option avalible (which was Start). The intro appeared where Jimmy is talking back to his stepfather in the car with his mother nagging him as usual. I did enjoy the background music as Shawn Lee is a real musical genius.
After the intro, the game frooze with the audio glitching out. I have a short temper so I decided to grab a glass of water because I knew that this was going to be a real pain.
Later on I gave the game another go. It launched up, I skipped the intro and I spawned outside the school gates.
A text appeared saying "ENTER THE GATE". So I walked up to it, no option appeared. I tried just walking against it and to my suprise, it wasn't solid. Apparantly they weren't even close to finishing the main map.
Ethan and Trent ran up to me demanding my money. I paid them to get them off my back and I continued my journey. The sound was very distorted and sounded pretty terrible. I noted this down in Notepad since I do have a pretty bad memory.
The game told me to go down to the basement and look for the janitor. Strange, since the game had just told me that I should go to the Principals office. I sighed and continued.
When I reached the basement there was a key on the ground. I picked it up and it said "FIND PETE BEFORE" and the lights went out in the room that I was standing in.
I saw an icon appear on my Radar, a red X, typical enemy icon. So I ran after it. When I reached the boiler room, it disappeared.
The game began lagging for some time with Framerate drops and lag spikes. I took another swig of water and went back to my computer. A face popped up for half a second with screams in the background.
I got pissed off as programmers tend to prank their BETA testers, RockstarGames do have a history of this. So facepalmed and sighed.
Now the game was running smoothly without any sound difficulties. It told me to meet Russell in the hole. Strange, since in the final product of the game, you're supposed to meet Russell there later in the game and not in the beginning.
A strange person ran up to me in a hostile mannor. Covered in blood, the face was extremey low detailed. It looked like one of the bullies, but with black hair, blood soaked cothes, marks in his face and just a voice that gave me the chills.
He started to punch Jimmy, so I knocked him out. After that the game frooze. I said "Fuck it" and decided to wait until they fixed all of these issues.
I checked out my mail and saw that Sam had replied. He told me that they hadn't even begun sending out the BETA copies and that no one at RockstarGames had done so.
I was speechless. So I checked out my mail. The E-mail of which the game had was gone. I couldn't find it. I told Sam about this and he never replied. I searched through the forums on Bully-Board and found that another user whom remains anonymous posted a picture of the character that I found.
If anyone has any information on this, please E-mail me at keyloggeridioten@gmail.com This isn't really something that has kept me up at night, but it has kept me wondering for some time now.
Please again, let me know if you find any form of information on this issue.
// Simon
Credited to SWEGTA
Originally uploaded on April 6, 2013
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