Virtual Boy Will Talk and Play with You

Meet Milo, a young boy who enjoys football, drawing and playing around his fish pond. It's not so remarkable that he avoids your gaze when asked about homework, except that he's not real — an artificial intelligence (AI) controls his interactions with real people.

That's the hope for a future game, anyway. But the press and avid gamers got a preview of the current Milo tech demo at the E3 video game conference, which kicked off yesterday in Los Angeles.

Milo is the creation of Peter Molyneux, founder of Lionhead Studios and developer of ambitious games such as "Black and White" and the "Fable" series. Those games tried to present players with moral choices that had consequences for their characters, and also tried to play on people's real emotions.

Molyneux's latest effort takes advantage of Microsoft's new full-body controller for Xbox 360, known as Project Natal. The controller's sensor bar tracks the real-world movements of Xbox players and translates them into the game, which allows them to practically play with Milo in person.

The E3 demo shows Milo responding to a developer's questions with some fairly convincing facial expressions, body behavior and voice tone. He even "talks" and looks at a real-world drawing, courtesy of the Natal controller scanning it into the game. It's an impressive display that appears very human-like, and does not evoke any "uncanny valley" sensations of eerie or weird behavior that make people nervous.

Of course, that's just the recorded demo. A Kotaku editor who got hands-on time with the Milo demo did run into moments of awkwardness, such as Milo waiting for him to say something. But he also described the magic of the virtual boy complimenting him on his blue shirt.

If Molyneux's team at Lionhead can pull this off, such interactivity promises to multiply the effect of future games as both entertainment and learning tools.