

“One of the first red flags was when someone asked about hours and weekends and stuff like that," the developer recalls. Not long after they became Rockstar New England, Rockstar's vice president of development Jeronimo Barrera visited the studio and left some feeling a bit worried. Unfortunately, the honeymoon period did not last long and the studio's culture quickly changed. You know? I was excited to work on anything that they had, because most of the games that they’d churned out been pretty golden.” “It was nice to have some clout to a job. “Rockstar itself you say, ‘I work at Rockstar,’ people were really in awe of that,” one former developer says. Following their successful partnership, Rockstar purchased them in April 2008. Prior to Rockstar's acquisition of Mad Doc, the studio was approached to work on Bully: Scholarship Edition, which was a remaster of the original with new missions, characters, and items. “Living in the shadows of someone who casts a big shadow like Rockstar North, and trying to usurp that role, it’s really difficult and nearly impossible. “ wanted to be sort of the golden child in the Rockstar thing, but it’s really hard when Rockstar North was the one that was producing all the golden eggs at that time,” one developer says. While they wanted to be the "golden child in the Rockstar thing," it was hard to escape the shadow of Rockstar North - the main studio behind the Grand Theft Auto games. They were excited to prove themselves worthy as Rockstar had recently purchased them when they were still known as Mad Doc Software. Rockstar Vancouver was the team behind the original Bully, but Rockstar New England was entrusted to work on this sequel.
