O.K., I’ll admit it – instead of working on my ongoing essay or story I’ve been playing the video game Bully. Sorry, but it’s such a great game, probably my favorite of all time. What I like about it is exactly what the cultural puritans hate about it – it takes place not in a weird fantasy or sports world like most games, but in an exaggerated version of a place I know only too well, a prep school. While the average video player would like to be a knight with a big sword, a grizzly guy with a big gun, or a football player with big biceps, Bully answers a deeply held fantasy of mine, one that gamers are too young to have – to start again, to be young again knowing what I now know. Adolescence is the most charged time of our lives, one in which everything seems possible, when love or violence or almost anything can be around the corner, and Bully reflects this is in a clever, cartoonish way. There are many missions that you have to do to work your way through the game, and, thankfully for us with less than lightning reflexes, they’re interesting but not too hard, but there’s also a significant element of choice and ample opportunity to just walk around doing your thing. Despite the puritans’ disapproval (and you know they got no closer to the game than the title) there are moral decisions to be made – to protect nerds from bullies or to become a bully yourself, to stand up for yourself or try to appease and pay off the oppressor. I believe the bully/jock culture that cultivated such deadly fruit in Columbine cannot be effectively controlled by the school administrators that tacitly condone it as a way to keep the status quo but rather by fearless regular kids who refuse to accept it, and the creators of Bully seem to agree with me. You’re also free to express your love as well as your hate, to pick the girls you romance and kiss – and typically the prep queen is my favorite. Although my school didn’t have uniforms, the private girls schools in the area did, and I still get an erotic kick from the sight of a plaid skirt over knee socks. I’ve already pacified the bullies, preps and greasers and have just started on the jocks who, really, are the worst of all, with their athletic prowess and teamwork, but I have confidence that the nerds and I will prevail, and that maybe bag a cheerleader along the way. There’s really a kind of art in Bully, an open ended narrative that perhaps points the way to a new mode of expression. It’s clear the developers are no dummies – when the various factions are fighting over the greaser queen (and yes, I’ve snogged with her a time or two) she compares herself to Helen of Troy.