The Creatures Global Digital Ecosystem

An arti cial life entertainment-software product called Creatures was released in Europe in late 1996 and in the United States and Japan in mid-1997. When installed on a domestic computer (PC or Macintosh), each Creatures CD-ROM creates a virtual world in which autonomous software agents exist. The agents, known as "norns," interact with the human user, with each other, and with objects in their virtual world. Each norn coordinates perception and action via its own modular recurrent neural network: Each network has Hebbian learning, plus diffuse modulation of activity via a "hormonal" system that is part of that norn's "biochemistry." Details of each norn's neural network and biochemistry are genetically speci ed, and norns can breed via sexual reproduction. In the reproduction process, genetic material may be mutated and may also be subjected to "gene duplications" that enable potentially unlimited increases in complexity of the norns&...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 1999
• Where: ALIFE
• Authors: Dave Cliff, Stephen Grand
• Keywords: ALIFE 1999, Arti Cial Life, Creatures Cd-roms, Modeling And Simulation, Norn