Game of Life

Game of Life

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The game of life is one of the most culturally significant games ever produced (for the hacker culture at least, and I use the term ‘hacker’ here in the classical sense). The ‘game’ (in fact a cellular simulation) was created in 1970 by John Conway. You play the game by strategically placing cells on a square grid, and then observing their evolution. At first glance, it would appear to be a simplistic puzzle game, however, it is a deeply complex game that relies on countless mathematical algorithms, and thousands of patterns and pattern types have been created for it.

I shall now explain briefly how the game works. The game involves ‘cells’ arranged on a grid of squares, and their lives (and deaths and births) are based on some simple rules. For a cell to remain stable and ‘alive’, and live through to the next generation, it must be surrounded by exactly two or three other cells. However, if a cell is surrounded by only one cell, or no other cells at all, it dies from loneliness, and if a cell is surrounded by more than three cells, it will die from overcrowding. New cells can also be born if an empty block on the grid is surrounded by exactly three other cells. Therefore, a two by two square is the ideal pattern to use, however, that is considered ‘cheating’ as no dots ever move or die, and the pattern remains static and dormant. If an empty cell block is surrounded by three live cells, than it will be born to a new cell.

Each cycle, during which a cell may decide to die or multiply, is called a generation. Successful patterns are often determined by the amount of generations for which the pattern will stay alive. Indeed, the creator of the game started a contest in which he challenged people to come up with an eternal pattern. Bob Gosper (also well known for his work on fractals) won the contest by creating the now legendary ‘glider’ pattern. In the glider pattern, the dots interact with each other and as they die and evolve, the pattern slowly moves in a right-down direction (it ‘glides’ across the grid, hence it’s name). These glider patterns can then also be created by an ingenious pattern called the ‘glider gun’ (also created by Bob Gosper). The glider gun interacts with itself in such a way that it shoots out glider patterns every 30 generations or so, and yet, never dies. It always reverts to its original pattern during its cycle. Here is a picture of the famous glider pattern:

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Look familiar? Some of you might recognize it as the ‘hacker logo’ (not that hackers actually need a logo to bind them to each other, we’re individuals, right?). It was an American computer programmer called Eric Raymond (who also maintains the well known ‘how to be a hacker’ document, and is the co-founder of the Open Source Initiative) who first decided that it would be a good idea to use this pattern as a sort of hacker emblem in 2003, and since then it has been displayed on several hacking-related sites, and is often seen in the forum signatures of people who believe they are hackers.

So why is this game so revered by mathematicians and hackers a like? Simple, it challenges people to come up with complex solutions to a seemingly simple problem (why not just use the two by two square in the first place?). And we are the type of people that like to be challenged, that like to find complexity in simplicity, and that love the control we can have over a system. This is a game that you can truly hack. I urge you to all at least try this game once during your lifetime.

Other GOL resources that you may find interesting: http://www.catb.org/hacker-emblem/ http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life