Hey all,
My name is Dan Perkel, username berkperk on the bully-board website. I am a graduate student at the University of California in Berkeley California and a member of a team of people who are interested in how kids, teenagers, and young adults use different kinds of technology outside of schools. You can check out the website at:
http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu.
Games are obviously a big deal and Bully seems like it has been a huge deal ever since the announcement about its release was made last year. One of the things our group is interested is in all of the activity around games, not just what goes on in the game itself. We are more interested in what people do with games and not that interested in what games do to people (such as "how games make kids kill people"). I can see that you all have had a lot of discussions on this site about this kind of stuff and have been frustrated with how the game has been talked about even though know one had ever played it until the last couple of weeks (well almost no one...).
We want to take a much different look at games than anything that has been done before. Bully is a great game to look at because its about teenagers in school and this is one of the reasons that people in the news really seem to be freaking out.
We are trying to present other ways to think about games and give people who play them a voice in all of the debate. If we do our jobs well, our research could be seen by a lot of people. One of the guys I am working with on the project is this guy:
http://www.mattscape.com/, who has written some pretty interesting stuff about video games and culture.
We are looking people to interview about this research project on two main topics: your use of this website and your opinions about the game (so even if you haven't played yet, we'd still like to talk to you). If you are interested, please email me at dperkel AT sims DOT berkeley DOT edu, or send me a private message on the board. Depending on where you live, we could do the interview in person, over the phone, Skype, or instant messenger.
Please put "Bully Research" in the subject line of your email.
Thanks everyone! We think this will be a really fun and interesting experience.
Dan
Playing Bully project
