Combining personal themes like bullying into gameplay reminds me of Papo and Yo (more people should play it as it's one of the most exemplary emotional games) which also had you manipulating the world to interact with creatures but the theme in that was about the relationship with an alcoholic dad and has one of the best emotionally resonant endings because it's tied to gameplay rather than a cutscene.
According to an Eurogamer interview, the concept came from a concept art Ashwin Kumar did who's one of the VFX artists at PixelOpus:
The idea for Concrete Genie came from within that group - more specifically from VFX artist Ashwin Kumar, from who the game's lead character takes his name. Kumar built a pitch around the idea of bullying, creating a piece of concept art that was slowly unpacked by the rest of the team in terms of how it could translate to gameplay.
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"We could only be inspired by this if we incorporated the bullying theme into the game itself," says Robilliard. "This is our third iteration of those mechanics - as the story progresses, and you become invested in the landscapes and the creatures that you've built, it's the bullies in the game that start ruining your artwork, and you get to experience what that feels like. It's not just Ash's artwork - it's your artwork.
"It's unusually difficult to have that - when you go back and expect to see your creature there and something terrible's happened. But it's also, as a gameplay mechanic, very good at incentivising you to fix that situation, it's very compelling to return it to how you originally made it. It's worked out from a design perspective too."
It looks like a thoughtful implementation of a powerful theme, a compelling mix of Okami and Papa and Yo and the kind of artful game that Sony has encouraged so well in the past. "All those games with an authentic emotional connection," says Robilliard as our brief time together comes to an end. "That's definitely something we aspire to."