Humanity is the evolution of a concept that founder Yugo Nakamura began developing three years ago at his company, tha ltd., a studio known for their work with giant brands such as UNIQLO, MUJI, and the legendary Japanese musician Cornelius. Enhance joined the project in early 2018 to take on publishing duties, as well as contribute to level design and general gameplay consulting.

When I look up at the sky and see a flock flying by, it always stops me dead in my tracks: the beautiful, organic movements, the fluctuations in density and distribution—watching their flocking patterns, I can feel the presence of a kind of shared consciousness lurking within the society the birds create in a group.

How do birds perform these mysterious group behaviors?

Biologists have argued about this for ages, but the most decisive theory is from a man named Craig Reynolds—not a biologist, but a computer graphics expert. As he describes it, if you focus on single birds within the flock and apply three simple rules for each to follow (move towards the group, steer the same direction they are going, and keep far enough away from others to avoid collision), the result is astonishingly life-like.

In other words, there’s no shared consciousness driving the birds in a flock—it’s the result of a chain of instinctual behaviors among each individual member. This algorithm, known as “Boids,” has won adulation for the simplicity of its principles and the abundance of its practical applications (including games, CGI effects, unmanned vehicles, and more).

The thing that strikes me the most about Boids is how it wasn’t the result of observation and experimentation from trained biologists, but instead the “intuitive” creation of someone outside the field entirely. The three core aspects of the algorithm make perfect intuitive sense to us humans; they’re very easy to grasp.

Boids is, in a way, the human race’s idea of “birdlike” behavior, based on our perspective. We can’t know the truth behind what compels birds to move the way they do unless we become one ourselves, and for all we know, their thoughts might be somewhere completely different. But to human beings, located outside of bird society and equipped with more intelligence than birds (at least, I think so), Boids is one way for us to interpret the nature of these creatures.

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?

“From the first early demo I saw, I couldn’t get Humanity out of my head,” says Enhance Founder and CEO Tetsuya Mizuguchi. “The whole look and feel of it—manipulating these teeming masses of people—was mesmerizing, especially in VR. I knew right away it could be something special, which is why I couldn’t be more excited to help a visionary like Yugo-san realize its full potential.”

“I’ve long admired the work of Mizuguchi-san and his team; it feels like the perfect fit to be working with the people who made games like Rez and Tetris Effect,“ says tha Founder and Creative Director Yugo Nakamura. “Everyone at tha is working hard to make Humanity something that likewise engages all your senses—a fun, challenging game, but also something more meaningful than that. Rest assured we have lots more to show and talk about...”

Humanity is coming to PS4 with optional PlayStation VR support in 2020