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Tuesday, July 13, 2010

THE Buzz at TED Global 2010 - Eyes-on: Peter Molyneux's 'Milo and Kate' project

At the TEDGlobal 2010 conference in Oxford, games developer Peter Molyneux has shown off Milo and Kate, a forthcoming game for Microsoft's Kinect Xbox add-on. The game tells the story of Milo, a boy who's just moved to New England from London with his parents, and a dog called Kate.

Players take the form of Milo's friend, and interact without using a joypad. The Kinect camera tracks your hand and body movements and acts accordingly.

Molyneux showed off the early stages of the game, where Milo has just moved into his new house and is finding his way around. "Most of it is a trick", said Molyneux, "but it's a trick that works."

The earliest sections of the game show the player hunting down snails with Milo. Female players get butterflies instead -- Molyneux said that girls find snails too icky. You select them with movements of your hand, and at one point Milo asks if he should stamp on one. The demonstrator shouted "Go on Milo, squash it!" and he did.

All the while, the game is learning about the player. Using psychology techniques, the player is asked to make decisions that shape the character of who Milo turns out to be. Molyneux said, "No people's Milo can be the same", which may turn out to be somewhat of an exaggeration -- we were only shown a few of these decisions, so it's a little early to tell.

Milo then finds a pond, and the player is asked to teach him how to skim stones. Standing up, the demonstrator pretended to skim a stone, and the game responded. There was a tiny lag time as the movements were calculated, but it appeared effective. Each task earns the player a certain amount of points, depending on how well it's performed.

Read more:
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-07/13/peter-molyneux-milo-and-kate-x...

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

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