Watching Humans Being
The inspiration for our game Humanity came from thinking of how a transcendental being would interpret “human-like” behavior, in the same way we humans interpret bird flocking with Boids.
You can think of these “transcendental beings” however you like (aliens, gods, future A.I., etc.); the point is I wanted to explore how we humans and our society would look to an outside form of intelligence, and how they would simulate human group behavior.
I started this project by investigating and collecting assorted examples of how people behave in groups. Luckily, I live in Tokyo, which has crowds everywhere, so I was able to discover a lot of unique group behaviors at train stations, event venues, on the street, and so on.
When you expand your perspective and start to observe people with something like this in mind, you’ll find humans have an incredibly wide variety of group behaviors. For example, if these otherworldly beings looked at influencers, tweetstorms, and other social media phenomena, what would they deduce about humans based on that? What would they think of dictators, who come to power and get overthrown, only to see another dictator take their place? How would they interpret our history of war and peace, which seems doomed to repeat itself forever?