Artificial life game

Life simulation (or artificial life games) is a subgenre of simulation video games in which the player lives or controls one or more virtual lifeforms. A life simulation game can revolve around "individuals and relationships, or it could be a simulation of an ecosystem".

Life simulation games are about "maintaining and growing a manageable population of organisms", where players are given the power to control the lives of autonomous people or creatures. Artificial life games are related to computer science research in artificial life. But "because they're intended for entertainment rather than research, commercial A-life games implement only a subset of what A-life research investigates." This broad genre includes god games which focus on managing tribal worshipers, as well as artificial pets that focus on one or several animals. It also includes genetic artificial life games, where players manages populations of creatures over several generations.

Artificial life games and life simulations find their origins in artificial life research, including Conway's Game of Life from 1970. But one of the first commercially viable artificial life games was Little Computer People in 1985, a Commodore 64 game that allowed players to type requests to characters living in a virtual house. The game is cited as a little-known forerunner of virtual-life simulator games to follow. One of the earliest dating sims, Tenshitachi no gogo, was released for the 16-bit NEC PC-9801 computer that same year, though dating sim elements can be found in Sega's earlier Girl's Garden in 1984. In 1986, the early biological simulation game Bird Week was released.

In the mid-1990s, as artificial intelligence programming improved, true AI virtual pets such as Petz and Tamagotchi began to appear. Around the same time, Creatures became "the first full-blown commercial entertainment application of Artificial Life and genetic algorithms". By 2000, The Sims refined the formula seen in Little Computer People and became the most successful artificial life game created to date. In 2008 also came the game Spore in which you develop an alien species from the microbial tide pool into intergalactic gods.

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