Artefacts: Minecraft meets collaborative interactive evolution

Abstract

Procedural content generation has shown promise in a variety of different games. In this paper we introduce a new kind of game, called Artefacts, that combines a sandbox-like environment akin to Minecraft with the ability to interactively evolve unique three-dimensional building blocks. Artefacts does not only allow players to collaborate by building larger structures from evolved objects but also to continue evolution of others' artefacts. Results from playtests on three different game iterations indicate that players generally enjoy playing the game and are able to discover a wide variety of different 3D objects. Morever, while there is no explicit goal in Artefacts, the sandbox environment together with the ability to evolve unique shapes does allow for some interesting gameplay to emerge.