Games - Creatures

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	Games - Creatures

Creatures is an artificial life(alife) computer program series, created in the mid-1990s by English computer scientist Steve Grand whilst working for the Cambridge computer games developer Millennium Interactive. The program is regarded as an important breakthrough in the advancement of alife research.

Overview

In Creatures, the user 'hatched' small furry creatures called Norns into a world called Albia, and had to teach them how to talk, feed themselves, and protect themselves against vicious creatures called Grendels. Later games in the series introduced a third species, the Ettins.

The program was significant as it was one of the first commercial titles to code alife organisms from the genetic level upwards using a sophisticated biochemistry and neural network brains. This meant that the Norns and their DNA could develop and "evolve" in increasingly diverse ways, unpredicted by the makers. By breeding certain Norns with others, some traits could be passed on to following generations. Most interestingly, the Norns turned out to behave similarly to living creatures. This was seen as an important insight into how real world organisms may function and evolve. Earlier alife programs had worked by giving their organisms a limited set of commands and parameters, and seeing whether the way the subjects behaved was realistic.

The genetics in Creatures are somewhat different from human genetics: they are haploid and therefore any "evolution" is a result of random cross-over mutations. There is no concept of dominant gene and recessive gene. Nevertheless, the complexity of the simulated biochemistry meant that Norn behaviour was highly unpredictable.

Among the fans of Creatures were the Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins and author Douglas Adams.

History

Creatures was developed as a consumer product by Millennium, and was released by Mindscape in 1996. The program was instantly successful, and an online community of players soon formed, swapping Norns, creating new objects for Albia, sharing tips on how to play the game and anecdotes about unexpected evolutionary changes that they had seen, and even creating new breeds of Norn. At one point, the Creatures online community was the largest of its type.

In 1998, the computer games division of Millennium was sold to Sony Entertainment while those working on alife and Creatures formed a new company called Cyberlife Technology. Along with continued work on the Creatures titles, the company did work for industry and the British Ministry of Defence, famously attempting to teach live organisms to fly virtual fighter jets.

In the late 1990s, Grand left Cyberlife to form Cyberlife Research and focus on the production of new alife technologies, including current work on a robotic life form he calls Lucy as well as writing books about his research. The remainder of the company was renamed Creature Labs, and focused on computer game development.

Sequels to Creatures, including Creatures 2, Creatures 3 and the small-children's games Creatures Adventures and Creatures Playground, were released by Creature Labs in subsequent years. The final major Creatures release, Docking Station, was made available for download from the company's web site in 2001.

Development was suspended on future Creatures games on March 20, 2003, when Creature Labs ceased operations, but development and trademark rights have since been purchased by a company named Gameware Development, Ltd. Gameware has revived the Creatures Developer Network, the shop, the forums, and have released many before-purchaseable tools and add-ons for free.

Gameware staff that previously worked on Creatures have now developed a convergent media game for the BBC called BAMZOOKi.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Creatures ]

Games - Creatures

Overview

History

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