Tendo City

... contraversial, that is. It's actually a completely tame game... the only people bound to be offended are gamers who wanted GTA in School... seems like Rockstar really wants to tone down its negative image in the media... but this? Doesn't sound so interesting...

Trailer
http://ps2.ign.com/articles/724/724815p1.html

First heard about this a couple of days ago in the paper (New York Times: easily best paper in the country)... here's a copy of the article (since you people still haven't bothered to make an account at NY Times Online, have you...)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/arts/1...oref=login

Quote:With Bully, Rockstar Looks to Beat the Grand Theft Auto Rap
Rockstar Games


Scenes from Bully by Rockstar Games. In the game giving a smaller child a noogie or other gentle razzing is allowed, though it is not encouraged.

Article Tools Sponsored By
By SETH SCHIESEL
Published: August 10, 2006

Rockstar Games, best known for its violent, controversial and wildly popular Grand Theft Auto series, today plans to unveil its major game for the holiday season: a whimsical boarding-school romp called Bully.


A scene from the game Bully, in which standing up to and even fist-fighting bullies to stop them from tormenting others is encouraged.

When Rockstar first mentioned Bully to the public more than a year ago at a video-game trade show, the project sent a wave of concern through the industry. Anti-game activists claimed that it would encourage players to become bullies themselves. Even some executives at other game companies feared that Bully, coming from Rockstar, a company that has long been a lightning rod for politicians and others fearful of video games, would drag the entire industry into yet another quagmire of criticism.

It appears, however, that those claims and fears may have been overblown. Rather than thrusting the player into the role of a tough, the entire point of the game is that bullies (noticeable at a distance by their distinctive white shirts) are everyone’s enemies. A player takes the role of Jimmy, a new 15-year-old student trying to navigate the complex social hierarchies of boarding school while earning respect from various factions like the nerds, the preppies, the jocks and even the teachers.

Standing up to and even fist-fighting bullies to stop them from tormenting geeks and other students is encouraged. Giving a smaller child a noogie or other gentle razzing is allowed, though not encouraged. Hitting a smaller child, a girl of any age or an adult is strictly forbidden. You can try it, but you will not get away with it. The dramatic, ton-of-bricks response from school security, complete with purposely boring punishments, is meant to be a strong disincentive.

In short: old-time adolescent high jinks like setting off a stink bomb are O.K.; serious delinquency and criminality are not. The player is certainly not meant to be a total goody two-shoes — that would make a seriously boring game — but he is a cutup and a scamp rather than a seriously bad kid. Unlike real-life boarding schools, you can’t get drunk or use drugs. If a player skips class, the prefects come looking. If a player sleeps too little, your character begins to feel sluggish and unresponsive.

The broader point is that rather than simply transferring the wanton violence and mayhem of the Grand Theft Auto series to a juvenile setting, Rockstar seems to have pulled out that game’s most compelling elements — an open world for the player to explore, tightly defined and memorable characters, a strong story line, high-end voice acting — and rewrapped them in a game that the company clearly hopes will be rated T for Teen rather than M for Mature.

The game sanitizes many aspects of the modern prep school experience. There is no mission to sneak into a girl’s dorm at night and have sex. There is no plan to hide drug use from the authorities. There is no quest to find a liquor store in town that will sell to you.

In short it’s not really a boarding-school simulation, and that may be a good thing. Compared with real life, Rockstar has totally played down sex, drugs and alcohol. But as befits a game called Bully, it has certainly blown out of proportion the amount of real bullying that goes on these days.

In terms of the prevalence of actual physical intimidation, what Rockstar has done (perhaps unawares) is to take the reality of an all-boys school and shoehorn it into a coed environment. An all-boys school can really be like “Lord of the Flies” or a prison, combat brigade or any other all-male environment: brutal and physically hierarchical. But one of the miracles of coeducation is that as soon as girls are around, the boys often start treating one another in a more civilized fashion, even among themselves. As soon as there are girls on the campus, it’s not cool to be a bully anymore.

Bully the game does not capture that. The fictional school is coed, but among themselves the boys act as if they haven’t seen a girl in months.

In the end, though, that is what the public expects of its boarding-school vision. In the end it is irrelevant whether Bully is truly realistic, just as it is irrelevant whether “The West Wing’’ is a truly realistic depiction of the White House or if James Bond is a realistic secret agent. What matters is whether the material up for sale fits into the public’s idealized image of the subject in question. Bully certainly does that.

Rockstar knows, however, that no matter what the company says before the game comes out this fall, the final product will be dissected and analyzed like perhaps no video game before it. Rockstar caused a firestorm of controversy for itself and the entire industry last year when Internet hackers uncovered a hidden scene in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas that depicted the protagonist performing sexlike motions with his girlfriend.

That controversy prompted politicians from Capitol Hill to California to introduce legislation regulating the sale of video games (though such laws have routinely been thrown out by courts) as well as an investigation of Rockstar by the Federal Trade Commission, which concluded with a wrist-slap warning against deceptive marketing but no financial penalties. It is no leap to suggest that if any risqué or even marginal content is found in Bully, things will not go well for Rockstar or its corporate parent, Take-Two Interactive, which is already under federal investigation for its bookkeeping.

But if the game manages to avoid the pitfalls of controversy, it is positioned to be one of the big hits of the holiday season. Sony certainly hopes so. Rockstar plans to announce today that Bully will be available exclusively for Sony’s PlayStation 2 game console, which has sold more than 100 million units worldwide. The game is scheduled to go on sale in October.

That could be a little confusing for some consumers because Sony plans to introduce the PS2’s successor, the PlayStation 3, this November. Bully, however, will not be available for the newer system. With the PS2 near the end of its life cycle, Bully could be one of the last big hits for that system.

Bah, why don't they just make the Battle Royale America that they all know we want... that wouldn't cause any contraversy at all! :D

... okay, maybe not such a good idea, but still, it seems like they could come up with something better than this...

Jack Thompson just got OWNED.

Okay, that actually sounds like fun. If the AI is good, you should be able to steal the teacher's edition books and watch them go nuts. Get on the intercom and announce that the school's on fire so everyone goes outside while you make ready your ultimate school wide prank.

This actually reminds me of things like Animal House and all the other college movies, you can even play as the nerds and have a Revenge of the Nerds scenario. By removing the violence Rockstar is actually focusing on ...gameplay... I cant believe I just put Rockstar and gameplay in the same sentence.

The reviews should prove interesting, but if this is going to play out like I imagine it will (interactive college comedy movie) then here's hoping for a port to Wii.

I can imagine playing as a nerd and my roomate is Val Kilmer, and he wears bunny slippers and builds lasers and we go to parties and Kent, the bastard, gets us in trouble so we move his car in to his own room and then fill the principal's house with popcorn. Or something to that effect.

Quote:Jack Thompson just got OWNED.

Pretty much, yes.