Darwin Day: Good Evolution Games?

[Raemon777]

Darwin's birthay is on February 12th, which is a Sunday. I'd kinda like to do something fun to celebrate.

I was wondering if anyone knew of any good games that feature natural selection? Video games would work if necessary (to run through a lot of iterations quickly), but I'd prefer something closer to a board game, that has a party feel.

What's coming to mind is an activity from 10th grade biology: you get a bunch of skittles, and place them on a yellow background, and then you go through iterations of "eat the first skittle you see as fast as possible", and then for each remaining skittle, add two more skittles of the same color. Within a few generations they're all yellow because those were harder to see.

That framework is nice, but doesn't really produce an interesting result. I'm trying to think of something that, over the course of an afternoon, without computer simulation, produce some interesting emergent phenomena.

Anyone have thoughts? Does anything like this already exist?

 

[MindDetective]

Darwin's birthay is on February 12th, which is a Sunday. I'd kinda like to do something fun to celebrate.

I was wondering if anyone knew of any good games that feature natural selection? Video games would work if necessary (to run through a lot of iterations quickly), but I'd prefer something closer to a board game, that has a party feel.

What's coming to mind is an activity from 10th grade biology: you get a bunch of skittles, and place them on a yellow background, and then you go through iterations of "eat the first skittle you see as fast as possible", and then for each remaining skittle, add two more skittles of the same color. Within a few generations they're all yellow because those were harder to see.

That framework is nice, but doesn't really produce an interesting result. I'm trying to think of something that, over the course of an afternoon, without computer simulation, produce some interesting emergent phenomena.

Anyone have thoughts? Does anything like this already exist?

I've actually been working on a game that relies on dice and strategy (in applying your dice rolls to traits, etc.) It is in a pre-alpha stage at the moment. I was working through a simulated game and it wasn't terrible but still needed some work.

Self-promotion aside, you can pick some options out of the list here: http://boardgamegeek.com/geeksearch.php?action=search&objecttype=boardgame&q=evolution&B1=Go

I highly recommend this one as what is probably the best evolution-themed game: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/62219/dominant-species

 

[Ravenpoe]

Pokemon? >.>

 

[Jay]

?

 

[Raemon777]

@Jay: Lol


@MindDetective: to what extent would say DominantSpecies is "evolution themed", compared to how much it is actually "an instance of evolution." (Evolution-themed strategy games may be a good idea, but I'm particularly interested in games that actually showcase instances of mutations, selection and reproduction)
Added at: 21:27
Example:

What I've been thinking since posting is the notion that tournaments can be an iterated selection process. (Have winners play winners and losers play losers)

You could have a card game, where your initial deck is randomly generated. Some cards might interact with each other in simple ways. Each game, some cards are randomly added and removed.

Ideally you'd have winning decks replicate (maybe the losers become clones of the winner), but this may be impractical. But somehow, have a system that increases the frequency of the cards relevant to winning.

The "game" is fun for the reasons card games are usually fun. (It's vaguely symbolic of animals living out their lives). But the metagame is watching the decks evolve, not due to intelligent design, but because playing the game itself causes them to change. Some decks might become sleek and slim, others might develop weird, complex combos.

 

[MindDetective]

@Jay: Lol


@MindDetective: to what extent would say DominantSpecies is "evolution themed", compared to how much it is actually "an instance of evolution." (Evolution-themed strategy games may be a good idea, but I'm particularly interested in games that actually showcase instances of mutations, selection and reproduction)
Added at: 21:27
Example:

What I've been thinking since posting is the notion that tournaments can be an iterated selection process. (Have winners play winners and losers play losers)

You could have a card game, where your initial deck is randomly generated. Some cards might interact with each other in simple ways. Each game, some cards are randomly added and removed.

Ideally you'd have winning decks replicate (maybe the losers become clones of the winner), but this may be impractical. But somehow, have a system that increases the frequency of the cards relevant to winning.

The "game" is fun for the reasons card games are usually fun. (It's vaguely symbolic of animals living out their lives). But the metagame is watching the decks evolve, not due to intelligent design, but because playing the game itself causes them to change. Some decks might become sleek and slim, others might develop weird, complex combos.

I would say it doesn't really capture the iterative process of natural selection. I've thought about it for a while and it isn't an easy game dynamic to implement. You'll have to check out some of the others on the boardgamegeek search I did and see if any of them fit what you're looking for.

This discussion does prompt me to revisit some of the mechanics of my own efforts, though...

 

[drawn_inward]

I think you all have an interesting idea. Perhaps you could have a series of cards with traits (strength, speed, intelligence, etc) - you could use these to build the traits of your organism. Then, you could have another stack of cards that is a list of environmental pressures (UV, cold, low nutrients, dessication, etc) with scores associated with trait cards. The organism with the highest Fit score wins. Survival of the fittest. Random env pressures with possible bottle-necking, and extinction.

 

[strawman]

Start with a simple design for a paper airplane. Have each person mutate it in one way - add a fold, move a fold, etc. They can do so symmetrically (ie, one fold on one side should be duplicated on the other). Then everyone tests them. Everyone starts over again, but they can choose to start with one of the top two winners. This continues with everyone starting from the top two winners and you see where it leads you - in general whatever you were measuring for will have been increased significantly from the start.

Then line up all the airplanes in their generation and see what can be inferred about the evolution of the design.

If doing this in a class, have groups form, and each group chooses a different mutation, but then each student in each group makes the same plane so that you have a better sample for data collection. With the smaller version that only has one sample per mutation you will likely end up with poor choices due to building skills more than actual design improvements.

On the other hand, that is a risk with evolution because mutations often start out with only one or two samples, and they may die prior to breeding through causes unrelated to their mutation, or live longer and breed more due to causes unrelated to their mutation.

Lots of levels to explore here.

 

[Raemon777]

That sounds interesting. Have you actually done that?

 

[strawman]

Nope. Made it up on the spot just for you. There's likely to be all sorts of crafts you can do similarly. I imagine an evolving egg-drop would be even more fun, although that's harder to test objectively - would probably need a 4-6 story building and at least as many test units per generation as you have floors available. Plus that's easier to solve. Designing an airframe on the fly isn't as intuitive as protecting a fragile object from an instantaneous force, and paper airplanes only require one material. Not to mention there's less mess to tend to.

If you set things up well, you could go through a dozen generations and a multitude of mutations in a matter of hours.

Let me know how it goes if you do it.