Overview
The program was significant as it was one of the first commercial titles to code alife organisms from the genetic level upwards using a sophisticated biochemistry and neural network brains. This meant that the Norns and their DNA could develop and "evolve" in increasingly diverse ways, unpredicted by the makers. By breeding certain Norns with others, some traits could be passed on to following generations. Most interestingly, the Norns turned out to behave similarly to living creatures. This was seen as an important insight into how real world organisms may function and evolve. Margaret Boden, in 2003, rejected Creatures as being a form of alien life as the simulated metabolism is concerned with controlling the norn's behaviour, not on maintaining its 'physical' form. In 2011, Steve Grand stated that while the norns in Creatures could learn, generalise from past experiences to novel experiences, and react in an intelligent manner to stimuli, they could not think.
Earlier a-life programs had worked by giving their organisms a limited set of commands and parameters, and seeing whether the way the subjects behaved was realistic. While this is the first commercial program it is to be noted that other non-commercial programs had done this since the late 1970s such as the Savanna Simulator by Walter Vose Jeffries which ran on an Z80 based Exidy Sorcerer microcomputer and presented the creatures moving on a graphical grid.
The genetics in Creatures are somewhat different from human genetics; they are haploid. There is no concept of dominant gene and recessive gene, much less recombination between loci. Nevertheless, the complexity of the simulated biochemistry meant that Norn behaviour was highly unpredictable.
Among the fans of Creatures were the Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins, who called it a "quantum leap in the development of artificial life", and author Douglas Adams. Creatures inspired some players to take up careers in the sciences.
Read more about this topic: Creatures (artificial Life Series)