Early this year, Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker said that playing Peter Molyneux’s Milo may make adults ‘look and feel like a pedophile.’ The off-the-cuff remark cut to the heart of the opinion held by some that a game about an intimate relationship between a man and a young boy is kind of creepy. In a recent interview with USA Today, Molyneux indentified this general sense of unease as one of the biggest challenges that needs to be overcome in order for Milo to see a release.
When asked about whether he thought that consumers will eventually get to see Milo, Molyneux replied, “I think so, eventually. I do. There’s a lot of huge mountains to climb before that happens. The reason for that is it is enormously contentious for us to do a game, a story, an experience, about a boy. You are immediately appealing to all the dark thoughts of humanity.â€
But Molyneux seems to revel in the controversy. “I actually love that, the idea of being so contentious that it makes people turn around and say, ‘You can’t do a story about a boy.’ But, for me, doing that in that way is absolutely right. After all, for me one of the best films I saw last year was about an old man and a Boy Scout. It was called Up (Pixar and Disney's Oscar-winning animated film). If I described for you this story, 'It's about an old man and a Boy Scout, strangers meeting and living together and going on adventures,' you'd say, 'You can't do that. It's out of the question.' What you look for in drama and story is uniqueness and you look for experiences that people haven't had before and I think it's good to get it on a contentious level.â€
But don’t expect to jump into Milo anytime soon. “I don’t think of it as a released product at the moment. I still think this is a very, very big tech demo. I don’t think of it as something that would be a product on a shelf,†explained Molyneux when asked about a release date and how the game might be distributed.
Above: Peter Molyneux demos Milo at E3 2009
Last month, Peter Molyneux demonstrated Milo at the TED Global conference in the session on human systems.
Aug 4, 2010
Source:USA TodayviaCVG
