/vr/ - Retro Games

>>6201936
>According to the book Raising the Bar, Valve's Ken Birdwell had a friend whose 12-year-old brother, Ted Backman, used to draw. Ken had always liked his work, so while searching for a concept artist several years later, he asked Backman to provide a couple of sketches for 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 "Mr. Friendly" displaying an obvious penis. When questioned about it, Backman described that the creature would use its tentacled arms to pull the player towards itself until the point of fatal copulation. Birdwell was worried that Newell wouldn't approve of this material, but it turned out that was exactly what he was looking for. Newell and Backman then began a discussion about possible psycho-sexual alien behaviors and clinical descriptions of disturbed adolescent sexual fantasies. The sexual themes of some of these enemies were intended to elicit a response from the innate homophobia of 14-year-old boys, a significant portion of the targeted audience for the game

>ask kid brother for concept art
>draws a penis
>names it "mr. friendly"
>gabe: THATS GENIUS!