Evolve & Conquer: Teaching evolution via an engaging multiplayer video game

Teaching with games has been one of the buzz topics in pedagogy lately. Although video games aren’t a formal teaching method by any means, many education scientists suggest games increase intrinsic (self-) motivation to learn, augment information retention, and enable students to learn for longer periods of time beyond the normal attention span (of about 40 minutes). As one of its stated missions, BEACON wishes to educate the public about evolution. A possible means to accomplish this would be a full-fledged, engaging video game that is fun to continually play while teaching evolution. (Which, admittedly, can be a difficult task!)

Thus, a few members of Dr. Chris Adami’s lab at Michigan State University started the “Evolve and Conquer” (E&C) game project. In short, E&C will be a multiplayer video game (similar in play style to Starcraft and Warcraft), which allows players to experience “evolution in action” first-hand. Instead of directly teaching evolution, we make it a part of the video game such that players who wish to excel in the game would benefit by learning the concepts of evolution; for example, maintaining variation in your population (“clan”) of warriors will make it easier to adapt to and defeat a new enemy clan of warriors. In the following demonstration, we will give you a sneak peek at some of the core game mechanics.


Unit control and navigation

Players control the nanobots (“warriors”) with standard Real-Time Strategy controls. Left-clicking on units selects them, then right-clicking on the terrain gives them the order to move. Here, the nanobot is commanded to collect resources while automatically avoiding obstacles in the terrain.


Realistic physics

E&C will feature NVIDIA’s PhysX physics engine, which comes packaged with Unity3D. In E&C, physics will play a large role in the nanobots’ interactions in the world. Nanobots will have to adapt to challenging physical obstacles such as physical barriers, wind, mud, rockslides, and even meteor showers.


Combat / “survival of the fittest”

Beyond the physical environment, nanobots may be forced into direct conflict with alien species. This video demonstrates the combat system, where the nanobots are ordered to attack the hostile alien species. In battle, only the strongest species survive. Thus, the nanobots experience survival of the fittest.


Reproduction

Of course, the nanobots must be able to reproduce in order to evolve. This video shows how nanobots reproduce. Whenever the nanobot consumes three resource cubes, it is able to produce an offspring.


Inheritance with variation

Here, an army of nanobots are producing offspring en masse. Each offspring inherits the traits of its parent, though some of the offspring experience slight changes (“mutations”) and become larger, faster, stronger, etc.


Limited resource competition

Not only do nanobots have to weather a hostile physical environment and survive combat with alien species, they have to compete for limited resources to reproduce as well. In this video, two nanobots forage for resources and reproduce after they have gathered 3 resource cubes. In this case the larger, faster nanobot outcompetes the smaller, slower nanobot.


Automatic foraging and reproduction

If you don’t feel like micro-managing the forage-and-reproduce process of your nanobots, you can order them to automatically forage and reproduce by themselves. In this video, a smaller, faster nanobot competes for limited resources with a larger, slower nanobot. If we let this run for an extended period of time, the faster nanobot would sweep the population. Thus, E&C is a full-fledged simulation of evolution by natural selection.

Feel free to leave feedback on this page. We hope to have a public playable demo soon, so keep an eye out!

10 Comments

  1. […] free to leave feedback on our lab page. We hope to have a public playable demo soon, so keep an eye […]

  2. This looks very interesting. If you need any support in terms of alpha testing/beta testing, there are members of the Ann Arbor Science & Skeptics that are available to provide assistance! Heh! Good luck!

    • Randy Olson says:

      Thank you for the kind words and support! More beta testers are always welcome. Drop me an email (rso@nullrandalolson.com) and we will be in touch when the demo is released.

      Cheers,
      Randy

  3. ey! just found out about this extremely interesting development.
    please keep me updated and let us know if more beta-testers are needed from the southern hemisphere

  4. Chris Kmiec says:

    I am extremely interested in this idea. As an MSU student, is there a way for me to get involved? I am currently a cognitive neuroscience major interested in the implications of video games. Thanks!

    • Randy Olson says:

      Hi Chris, thank you for your interest in the game. At the very minimum, we can add you to the list of closed beta testers for the game. The beta testing phase should be coming very soon. If you’d like to be added to that list, just send an email: olsonran@nullmsu.edu. After beta testing, we can discuss future projects relating to the game.

  5. dralexcobalt says:

    Randy,

    Is there any further development of the resource mechanic past the single value resource bricks in the above demonstrations?

    Patrick Abeli

  6. Hi Patrick,

    The cubes still count as only 1 resource. When they are worth more it speeds up the reproduction process since the bots need 3 resources to reproduce. This means more bots on screen faster which slows the frame rate down to much :/ If you have any comments/suggestions feel free to post!

    -David

    • dralexcobalt says:

      I didn’t think about the frame rate issue. What if the resource blocks could be worth less too, say anywhere from 0.1 resources to 2.0 or something? If each nanobot had a “pool” of resources that it could draw from that was not only an integer value, but still took 3.0 of these resources to reproduce, you could still keep reproduction to an equivalent value.

      Additionally, you could make movement in space and attacking cost resources. This would put addition processing load for each unit time, but it could be interesting.

      But it seems to me that, at least in the “battle” scenario, there should be an increase in resource value obtained by defeating an enemy that is more fit (larger, faster). Similarly, if you ‘defeat’ a much less fit (smaller, slower) enemy, they would give you less resources. This might increase the total number of resource blocks on screen at any given time, which may in turn slow down the frame rate, but stationary blocks are probably easier to render than an animated nanobot.

      Just some thoughts,

      Patrick

  7. […] ago, we unveiled the early versions of Evolve & Conquer, a video game for teaching evolution that we’ve been developing in-lab. We’ve come a […]

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