Darwin's Avatars: a Novel Combination of Gameplay and Procedural Content Generation

The co-evolution of morphology and control for virtual creatures
enables the creation of a novel form of gameplay and
procedural content generation. Starting with a creature
evolved to perform a simple task such as locomotion and
removing its brain, the remaining body can be employed in
a compelling interactive control problem. Just as we enjoy
the challenge and reward of mastering helicopter flight
or learning to play a musical instrument, learning to control
such a creature through manual activation of its actuators
presents an engaging and rewarding puzzle. Importantly,
the novelty of this challenge is inexhaustible, since
the evolution of virtual creatures provides a way to procedurally
generate content for such a game. An endless series
of creatures can be evolved for a task, then have their brains
removed to become the game’s next human-control challenge.
To demonstrate this new form of gameplay and content
generation, a proof-of-concept game—tentatively titled
Darwin’s Avatars—was implemented using evolved creature
content, and user tested. This implementation also provided
a unique opportunity to compare human and evolved control
of evolved virtual creatures, both qualitatively and quantitatively,
with interesting implications for improvements and
future work.