Automata Quest: NCAs as a Video Game Life Mechanic
Published in Alife for and from video games workshop at ALIFE2023, 2023
Recommended citation: Sato, H., & Lund, T., & Yoshida, T. (2023, August) Automata Quest: NCAs as a Video Game Life Mechanic. Presented at Alife for and from video games workshop at ALIFE2023. MIT Press. https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.14364
We study life over the course of video game history as represented by their mechanics. While there have been some variations depending on genre or ”character type”, we find that most games converge to a similar representation. We also examine the development of Conway’s Game of Life (one of the first zero player games) and related automata that have developed over the years. With this history in mind, we investigate the viability of one popular form of automata, namely Neural Cellular Automata, as a way to more fully express life within video game settings and innovate new game mechanics or gameplay loops.
Recommended citation: Sato, H., & Lund, T., & Yoshida, T. (2023, August) Automata Quest: NCAs as a Video Game Life Mechanic. Presented at Alife for and from video games workshop at ALIFE2023. MIT Press.