Black Mirror - Plaything & Creatures
AKA - The real kind of AI I want to see in videogames
Season 7 of Black Mirror has come out and, surprisingly, I've found a very personal reference in one of the episodes "Plaything" with Peter Capaldi. The game central to the plot really gives me flashbacks to a truly remarkable game I played as a quirky, lonely, kid.
This gives me an excuse to write a whole essay on one of my favourite games which only 5 people will read. It's still worth it. If you watched this episode, and want to learn a small portion of 1990s gaming history knowledge, read on!
In the episode, an introverted game reviewer in the 90s gets tasked with reviewing a game by a genius designer, with a troubled pasts, which attempts to replicate virtual life. A new kind of game, which isn't about conflict or "winning", but which focusses on caring and nurturing virtual life.
The instant this was brought up by Collin, the game designer, I knew this would be my favourite episode of the season. As a video game player I did enjoy shooter games to some extent, but I always much preferred creative, or strategy, games such as Theme Hospital, Black & White, Pharoah and others. But this game instantly reminded me of one of my all time favourite games.
Thronglets, the in-episode game, is likely heavily inspired by the 90s obsession with artificial life and games such as the creatures series created by eccentric, and brilliant, computer scientist Steve Grand.
How remarkable is this game? Isn't it just some basic Tamagotchi style game?
Oh boy would you be wrong! Let's dig in to one of my major hyperfixations from age 7 onwards.
Steve Grand - What Doth Life?
Tamagotchi's were a popular craze in the 90s, but creatures is on a whole different level. Tamagotchis, being a kind of virtual life, relied on you interacting with them using various buttons to simulate giving food, playing or petting them etc. Fun for some (except when you left on holiday for a week and they all DIED) but limited.
Creatures, however, is a very different beast.
The AI models you see today? Computer scientist and AI researcher Steve Grand created very basic versions of neural networks in order to simulate intelligence and learning for his creatures! Unlike modern AI grad students, who have the benefit of standardised hardware and software libraries, Steve instead created this system which worked on Windows 95 computers. Quite the achievement.
It's more remarkable when you realise you could have 10's of creatures in the same world interacting at the same time on this era of hardware.
These simulated life forms were called Norns. They could actually learn, in a rudimentary way, using input from their environment and input from the person running the game. Players weren't entirely passive, as you could pet or slap the norms to reward/punish them for actions as well as interact with objects within the 2D game world.
There is an excellent video explainer for this system which can be found here:
Not only did Steve Grand do this, he simulated entire biochemical systems for the creatures as well. Not only did it simulate things such as hormones, ATP and insulin but also a number of illnesses and toxins.
Creatures could get illnesses, which you would need to treat. Spend too long in the swamp area? You might get heavy metal poisoning or some horrible bacterial infection.
It would also affect their drives. Too little glucose, and a creature ran the risk of dying. A nice slice of cheese, or some berries, helps to boost energy and keep your norns happy and healthy.
Not only were neural networks, and simulated biochemistry, involved but you could also breed and raise new norns. The genetics system in the game would also influence various inherited biochemical behaviours, but also some of the neural structure as well!
There are STILL communities who breed norns to this day. There is a genre of online game which does use this kind of mechanic, which does remain popular to this day so at least part of Creatures survives on in this form.
Did I also mention that you could SPEAK to them? I still boot up this game on occasion and interact with some of my favourite norns. Obviously, given the hardware and software of the day, the speech is limited to a small vocabulary, but for a 1990's game this was truly incredible.
The Dangers of Too "Realistic" Simulation
Obviously, Black Mirror is a show, in part, telling stories around the dangers of technology. I did like the episode itself, considering the implications of having a significantly more advance simulated life AI observing (and viscerally experiencing) the worst of human behaviour, and what that might motivate it to do and there is ambiguity to what that might indeed be at the end of the episode.
I do think it's important to also discuss how people interact with AI systems in times when social isolation is increasing. The main character in Plaything is drawn to the in-game Thronglets because they offer him a safe non-judgemental social space which he has never experienced before in his life. There are plenty of examples of current AI chatbots who people do interact with in lieu of actual people, perhaps for similar reasons. The cost of living driving up costs, and increasing indirect hostility of business and governments to "third spaces" like parks, bars, libraries and other spaces, also doesn't help the young of today to socialise in person like they did in the past.
It is quite dangerous, then, to have people perhaps too emotionally dependent on software systems which, bluntly, are controlled and owned by large corporations and which can be trained, or altered, with certain viewpoints in mind.
“What I had not realized is that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people.”
― Joseph Weizenbaum on ELIZA, the first chat-bot
Will we live to see such times again?
I miss the creatures games, and the fusion of scientific and creative energy that made it possible in the 1990s gaming environment. Can this kind of thing happen again?
Frankly, Creatures was very much a fluke of a game, created by an AI researcher to show the possibilities of technology to emulate life. I love it to bits, but it's highly unlikely anyone will create anything like it again given current profit motives and linear-mindedness of game design which railroads design into fairly discrete categories. Not necessarily a bad thing, per say, but something that limits the imagination.
The closest I've gotten to seeing similar complexity is with Trico in The Last Guardian, but Trico pales in comparison to the complexity of Steve Grand's creations. Team ICO's intentions to build a relationship with a simulated creature, however, were well served by their approach and the lack of complexity makes it no less impressive. I do wonder, however, what simulated life games could achieve with today's AI systems and technologies.
My scratched up Creatures 2 CD ran on Windows 95 computers back in the 1990s. Imagine a similar game released today, taking advantage of all the advancements in software design and research we've had since then and what that could be like....
I can only dream of electric sheep...
