Blogs - figalot

According to the book Raising the Bar, Valve' s Ken Birdwell had a friend whose 12-year-old brother used to draw. Ken had always liked his work so he asked him, several years later, to do a couple of sketches of possible monsters. He presented sketches of several very sexual-oriented monsters to him and Gabe Newell, managing director, the kind of material Birdwell did not expect. Among them was this "Mr. Friendly", with something that looked like a penis. The creature was to literally "rape" the player, holding them with its tentacled arms until the point of fatal copulation. Birdwell was quite disturbed by the concept and wondered if Newell would like it; it turns out he did. They then chatted about possible psycho-sexual alien behaviors and their relation with disturbed teenager sexual fantasies. The sexual themes of some of the enemies were intended to appeal to the innate homophobia of 12 year old boys, the targeted audience for the game.^[1]