Black & White is a god video game developed by Lionhead Studios and published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows in 2001 and by Feral Interactive in 2002 for Mac OS. Black & White combines elements of artificial life and strategy. The player acts as a god whose goal is to defeat Nemesis, another god who wants to take over the world. A primary theme is the concept of good and evil, with the atmosphere being affected by the player's moral choices. The core gameplay mechanic of Black & White is the interaction between the player and an avatar creature, who carries out the player's instructions and whose personality and behaviour change in reaction to how they are treated. Multiplayer is supported over a local network or online.

Peter Molyneux led the three-year development of the highly anticipated game, originally to feature wizards instead of gods. Black & White was written from scratch, and the intention was to have the main user interface free of icons, buttons, and panels. Versions for games consoles were in development, but were cancelled.

Black & White received universal acclaim on release; reviewers praised the artificial intelligence, uniqueness, and depth, although the system requirements and bugs were criticised. Black & White won awards from several organisations, including the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences and the Guinness World Record, for the complexity of the artificial intelligence, selling over two million copies. Later re-reviews of the game considered it to have been overrated at the time, but it was nevertheless considered one of the greatest games of all time. An expansion, Black & White: Creature Isle, and a sequel, Black & White 2, followed.

Since its original release, Lionhead and its intellectual property were purchased by Microsoft, while EA retains the publishing rights. The game was never re-released.

Gameplay

The player takes on the role of a god ruling over several islands populated by various tribes. The player interacts with the environment via an animated, on-screen hand that is used to throw people and objects, tap houses to wake their occupants, cast miracles, and perform other actions.Prima Guide, pp. 9, 12. Key items in the story are gold and silver scrolls. Gold scrolls initiate a significant event (including the main story), and silver ones a minor task to perform for a reward.Clue Book, p. 12.

Nearly every action (or lack thereof) affects how the player is judged by their followers: the player may be seen as a good god, an evil one, or in between the two. The land, interface (including the hand), and music change according to that alignment. A good god's temple is brightly coloured, while an evil god's is designed to look intimidating.Clue Book, pp. 5, 17.Final Hours, p. 13. It is not necessary to consistently perform acts of either alignment, and a mixture of the two can be used to stay neutral. The player has two advisors, one good and the other evil, who try to persuade the player to do things according to their alignment.Clue Book, p. 4.Manual, pp. 1, 11.

An important task is expanding the villages by constructing buildings and increasing the number of villagers. Important buildings include houses, the Village Centre (which displays the god who controls the village and the available miracles), and the Village Store (which stores resources and displays the villagers' desires). Buildings are created in the Workshop after obtaining blueprints.Prima Guide, pp. 30–41. Wonders are special buildings granting a specific benefit. Villagers belong to one of eight tribes, such as Norse, Celtic, or Japanese, each having a different Wonder.Prima Guide, p. 39. Villagers can be assigned to perform a specific task such as fishing or starting a family.Prima Guide, pp. 50–60. If the Temple is destroyed, the game is lost.Prima Guide, pp. 26–29. When attacked, Temples transfer damage to their god's buildings and followers in defence; only Temples whose god has no followers are vulnerable.Manual, p. 14.

The Temple is surrounded by sites where villagers worship, generating the power needed to cast miracles. Villagers require feeding, healing, or rest to worship. How many villagers worship is controlled at the Village Centre, and which miracles are available depends on those available at the player's villages.Prima Guide, pp. 26, 33, 63. Miracles include providing food or wood, healing people, and providing shields to protect an area.Prima Guide, pp. 64–75. Miracles can also be cast by using Miracle Dispensers, a common reward for completing Silver Reward Scrolls. These allow the casting of a miracle without worship.Prima Guide, p. 38. Miracles can only be cast, and most other actions performed, within the player's area of influence, which can be extended by expanding the population of villages owned or by taking over others.Prima Guide, p. 17. Miracles can be selected at the Temple or Village Centre, or by performing certain gestures with the Hand.Prima Guide, pp. 33, 35, 64. Power can also be produced by sacrificing living beings at the altar.Clue Book, p. 31.

The general goal of a level is to gain control over every village on an island, accomplished through acts that persuade the villagers to believe in the player. Villagers can be swayed by everything from assistance with day-to-day tasks to being terrorised by fireballs and lightning storms.Prima Guide, pp. 16, 43. Artefacts (special objects that glow in their owner's colour) and missionary disciples can be used to impress villagers.Prima Guide, pp. 42, 43, 56. Villagers become bored with repetitive attempts to impress them. For example, if boulders fly overhead too frequently, their effect is lost. This forces the player to use multiple methods to convert a village.Prima Guide, pp. 43, 44.

The game features a skirmish mode, where other gods are battled for control of an island, a multiplayer mode over a local area network (LAN) or an online service, and The God's Playground, where gameplay aspects can be practised. In multiplayer mode, deathmatch and cooperative modes are available.Prima Guide, pp. 6, 7.Clue Book, p. 10. In cooperative mode, players share a creature.Manual, p. 44. Black & White includes a feature enabling the import of real weather.

Creature

One of Black & Whites core features is the interaction between the player and an avatar-like creature. Three are available to select from the beginning of the game, and others can be obtained by completing Silver Reward Scrolls. The currently owned creature can be swapped with a new one at certain points in the game. The creature starts out small and grows as the game progresses. Each has strengths and weaknesses: apes are intelligent and proficient at learning but lack strength; tigers are strong but learn slowly.Prima Guide, pp. 82–100.

As a god, the player can teach their creature to perform tasks such as stocking the village store or performing miracles. The creature is taught what and when to eat, and how to attack or impress enemy villages. Fighting skills may be taught in one-on-one battles with other creatures; attack and defence abilities can be improved. Teaching is performed using a reinforcement learning system: if the creature does something the player does not want, it can be discouraged with a slap. If the creature does something the player approves of, it can be stroked. The creature remembers the response to various actions and gradually changes its behaviour accordingly.Prima Guide, pp. 101–111. With time and repetition, it can perform complex functions that allow it to serve as the player's avatar. Three types of leashes are used to command the creature to go to a specific place, and can be tied to a building to restrict movement. One leash encourages the creature to pay attention when actions are demonstrated; the others encourage either benevolent or malevolent behaviour.Prima Guide, pp. 27, 83, 103–106. The game reinforces the creature's choices and learning by providing visual feedback, and the creature has an alignment separate from the player's. Evil wolves sport glowing eyes and large fangs and claws; good ones turn a shade of purple and glow gently.Prima Guide, p. 102.

Lionhead Studios used Michael Bratman's belief–desire–intention model to simulate creatures' learning and decision-making processes. A creature forms an intention by combining desires, opinions, and beliefs. Beliefs are attributed to lists that store data about various world objects. Desires are goals the creature wants to fulfill, expressed as simplified perceptrons. Opinions describe ways of satisfying a desire using decision trees. For each desire, the creature selects the belief with the best opinion, thus forming an intention or goal.

Plot The player begins on an island as a new god, created from a family's prayers. After saving their son from sharks, the god follows the grateful family to their village. A large creature (a lion, a bear, or a sheep, depending on your creature), known as the Guide, is later discovered, who tells the player of its former master, a god named Nemesis, who desires to reign supreme as the one true god by destroying all others. The player is told of the Creed, an energy source with the ability to destroy gods. Nemesis, upon hearing this, destroys his former creature and attacks the village. Shortly after a mysterious vortex opens and the player enters to escape Nemesis. He's transported to a second island and greeted by another god, Khazar. Khazar reveals that it was he who sent the vortex and requests assistance against another god, Lethys, Nemesis' underling, in exchange for resources to rebuild the village.

Later, Nemesis destroys Khazar and his creature, stealing his piece of the Creed in the process. Lethys then kidnaps the player's creature, taking it through a vortex that, unlike the others, closes automatically. In the third land, the creature is held in stasis by three magical pillars. After the creature is freed by converting the villages (and avoiding their reconversion by both burning unbelievers and a wolf pack), Lethys implores the player not to take his last village, grants the player a piece of the Creed, and opens a vortex. The player returns to the first land, now cursed by Nemesis; fireballs and lightning rain from the sky. After the curses are lifted by destroying the three guardian stones, a cursed village is freed and the piece of the Creed is claimed, Nemesis appears, inviting the player to his realm. On the last island, Nemesis curses the player's creature, causing it to slowly change alignments, shrink, and grow weaker. When the final piece of the Creed is obtained, the player destroys Nemesis and is left as the only god in the world.Prima Guide, pp. 113–195.Clue Book, pp. 2-8.

Development and release

History