Genetics, Evo-devo and Spore

September 1, 2008

spore

What are the things that evolution has at its disposal to define a creature, to mix and match the parts, and eventually come up with a unique organism that’s going to live its life and try to reproduce?

– Will Wright, gaming innovator

Every time I take a “how big a geek are you” test, I fail, since I am not a gamer. That’s by choice. If I ever start, I am doomed. There is not enough time for all the things I care about as it stands, especially music, so gaming has always been kept at arms length. That said, cool games, and ideas in games are always of interest.

Spore, which gets released on Sunday, has to be among the most highly anticipated, most hyped games since, well I suppose, GTA IV. Well, when you bring a cool game and genetics together, you get my attention. For those who have been living inside a cave, Spore allows players to design a virtual world of new life and then control the evolution of the creatures and species they create. Being a game, you aren’t exactly limited to life as we know it. You can create all kinds of creatures including such creatures as a one-eyed web-footed creature with a snout (I am sure you can get much more crazy than that). But apparently, the rules governing creature creation aren’t as random as one might think.

On September 9th, the National Geographic Channel is premiering a documentary entitled How to build a better being. The documentary goes into the backstory of how Will Wright, the creator of Spore, worked with scientists like Michael Levine and Neil Shubin to understand the principles of genetics, mutations, evolution, biodiversity, etc. Since the game allows you to mate, compete against predators, obtain better body parts and, if they survive, ultimately become spacefaring voyagers, I suspect it will be interesting to see what the in game experience is like, and if the game can be used, perhaps in a modified form, or as controlled game play, to explain some of the underlying principles of evolution and genetics to kids. I have said many times that in a world where kids are exposed to interactive multimedia environments from a very young age, we need to make teaching interesting. Nat Torkington achieved that by using Scratch to teach kids programming. Since Spore is even cooler that Scratch, maybe we can leverage interest in Spore to teach children about how species evolved, what they share in common, the competitive pressures of nature, etc. For example, Neil Shubin was able to explain to Wright what the fundamental design patterns of animal life on earth are and was able to recreate a prehistoric fish in Spore.

Here’s a video that was made available that shows some of the discussions mentioned above. It’s kinda cool to see the kind of discussion and planning that goes into a video game and you get the idea of how you might be able to use some of those ideas and implement them into a class curriculum, one that actually be fun.