Games that move science forward

Approaches to the creation of civil science games

Dmitry Muchkin, DTF

Developer Claire Baert posted material on the Gamasutra portal in a blog in which she described the types of citizen science games and approaches to their development.

Definition and classification

Civil Science games are projects in which players help solve scientific problems through gameplay. Professor Karen Schrier in her book "Scientific Games" (Knowledge games) proposed the first classification of this type of games.

The purpose of the first type of civil science projects is to collect information about players. They offer different users to solve the same tasks and collect statistics about what choices the players make, how fast, how they interpret the images shown to them.

Apetopia

For example, in Apetopia, players have to choose which gates to pass through, depending on their color. Their decisions are recorded and processed by a neural network that helps scientists better understand how people perceive colors.

Civil science games of the second type represent complex computational tasks in a simplified form. Players find solutions to these problems by helping scientists cope with problems that could take decades to deal with.

So, in Quantum Moves, users help optimize quantum computers by moving a wave across the screen. In Foldit, players are engaged in protein folding, helping biologists find the best variants of their structure.

Casual and hardcore

Some civil science games can be very difficult: they require an impressive amount of knowledge or offer tasks that require long hours to solve.

For example, in EteRNA, in which you need to stack RNA molecules, new levels regularly appear, but to get to them, a beginner must complete 120 puzzles and earn ten tools. This may take several weeks.

EteRNA

But there are also projects that are more friendly to new players. After coping with a minute-long training in mobile Colony B, the user starts drawing circles around clusters of bacteria. Information about these clusters allows scientists to learn more about how the human microbiome is related to its diseases. Even those who have launched the app for the first time can contribute to the research.

From test subjects to experts

Players in civil science games act as either test subjects or scientists. In Sea Hero Quest, users generate a huge amount of data about a person's mental processes during orientation in space, which helps to develop tests to determine dementia.

And in Stall Catchers, players do not generate, but analyze information. They're looking for clogged blood vessels in the brain. By finding them, users help to study Alzheimer's disease.

Stall Catchers

In Reverse The Odds, players look at cancer cells, contributing to research designed to determine the best procedures for different cases of the disease. This work could be done in laboratories, but it would take a huge amount of time.

"The players are doing the same as us. They determine whether there are tumor cells in the samples, how many of them are on the protein, and how dangerous their presence is."
Ann Kilty, Cancer Research UK scientist

In some cases, players even become experts in the scientific field of the project. Benjamin Keep, one of the developers of EteRNA, says that one of the tasks in the game was to create RNA molecules that identify tuberculosis. Professional researchers in the laboratory were unable to develop a properly functioning molecule, but the players succeeded.

"The experience of volunteers in studying and interpreting laboratory data, building theory, creating computer models leads to the appearance of their unique qualifications, adjacent to the knowledge of professional scientists."
Benjamin Kip, EteRNA Developer

Approaches to development

There are three ways to connect science and games. The first is to develop a game around a specific problem. The gameplay in this case will solve this problem. The second is to gamify a scientific task. Then the project will not have gameplay as such, but game elements will be added to the problem.

The least popular approach is to separate the game and the scientific problem. The first game made in this way is Reverse The Odds. In it, the player must help colorful creatures, "Odds", to survive. He can play mini-games, develop and improve the place of residence of creatures.

Reverse The Odds

For all actions, the player needs potions. They recover over time, but they can also be earned by entering the laboratory and studying samples with cancer cells.

EVE Online

All the games listed above are free, their existence depends on grants, charity, funding and grants. Scientists rarely have budgets to promote their games. Most often, their audience conforms to the 90-9-1 rule, according to which a small percentage of players do most of the work.

All this prompted businessman Attila Szantner and his friend Bernard Revaz to create a Massively Multiplayer Online Science (MMOS) company to combine science and mainstream games.

Project Discovery

Together with the developers of EVE Online, they launched Project Discovery, which attracts players to the study of scientific data. This is the first civil science project perfectly integrated into a successful MMO game. EVE users have already helped create millions of scientific classifications using the same tools as astronomers at the University of Geneva and biologists from Human Protein Atlas.

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