In plain language, what are citizen science games?
I’ll start with a quick introduction to citizen science. Citizen science is a collaboration between scientists and non- scientists to conduct scientific research. Citizen science is a way for people with no scientific background to contribute to real science. Citizen scientists worldwide contribute to various projects. For example, bird watchers can observe birds and report their sighting on e-Bird, to help scientists understand species distribution and changes in patterns, which could be signs of environmental changes. Everyone can analyse scientific data online, on platforms like Zooniverse, which currently hosts 85 online projects in astronomy, literature, biomedicine and other fields. There are more than 1,100 projects you can join via scistarter if you are curious about citizen science.
Citizen science games are games that help research and that can lead to scientific discoveries. They are games in which players help solve complex problems, produce or analyse data for research. In these games, players can help with diagnosing and curing diseases, they can help build a quantum computer, as well as answering important research questions. There are not many citizen science games yet. Making a game is difficult and the design is even harder when it must adhere to scientific constraints and rigour. Not many people are aware they can play games to help science, so thank you, GOTSCIENCE, for covering this topic !
How did you first get interested in this topic?
I had been working in the video games industry for 10 years. Three years ago, I was a project manager for a publisher and we were preparing the launch of a new game. I had a list of online games to look at and in this list was the game Foldit, which I had not heard of before. The tagline, ‘Solve Puzzles for Science’, was a good indication that this was not the kind of game I was after, but it aroused my curiosity.
I launched the game and started with a series of intro puzzles. Puzzle after puzzle, I was introduced to the different components that make the structure of a protein. I was unlocking new tools to help me fold my proteins and make them more energy efficient, I discovered recipes, scripts made and shared by players to automate repetitive tasks. Later that day, I found out that Foldit was actually helping scientists with protein structure prediction and protein design. Foldit players have already helped find the structure of a protein that had stumped scientists for years. There is a lot of information about the science behind Foldit on their website. Playing Foldit was my first contribution to citizen science.
When I found out that there were other games like Foldit, first I tried them all, and then I decided to set up a website dedicated to citizen science games. I contacted the science teams, gathered news, articles, publications linked to them and launched the website in December 2016. This is how I started chatting with Eglė Ramanauskaitė, the citizen science coordinator for Stall Catchers, a gamified project that accelerates Alzheimer’s research and ended up joining their team last year.
What is gamification, and how can it enhance the citizen science experience, for both participants and organizers?
I’m not a gamification expert so to answer this question, I’ll use the definition by Sebastian Deterding, a UK based researcher, expert in gameful design. “Gamification is the use of game design elements in non-game contexts”.
Gamifying an activity is using the approach used by game designers to make this activity more enjoyable, more engaging, to potentially retain participants for a longer period of time and to build stronger communities. There is no gameplay, but elements or mechanics, that can be found in games, are built around that activity. The purpose of the core activity is not to entertain the participants. In gamified citizen science projects, the goal is to help scientists and to accelerate research. The game elements should facilitate and support that goal. They can influence participants’ behaviour and in some cases, they can increase the quantity and quality of the science produced by citizen scientists.
Gamifying an activity is also using game design methods. To increase engagement using gamification, it’s important to understand the participants and their motivations, to design for them and to playtest with them. There are methods and techniques that can be applied at different stages of the development process to ensure that the design supports participants’ interests and expectations, and in citizen science, to ensure that the design also supports the scientific goals.
What types of citizen science projects benefit most from gamification?
In a recent workshop about citizen science games, Ginger Tsueng, the scientific outreach manager for Mark2Cure, gave a great example of how gamification helps their project. Scientific knowledge is mainly shared through (millions of) academic papers. In Mark2Cure, participants extract information from biomedical text. As she wrote on her slide, reading lots of text is not always exciting. Game elements like points or multiplayer features make the task more tolerable and facilitate the onboarding. Read her slide to get to get a better understanding of how participants help scientific research. The wall of text is too daunting? That’s her point.
In Stall Catchers, participants look for stalls in brains of mice affected with Alzheimer’s disease. Data analysis can be the bottleneck in scientific research, and having citizen scientists helping with the task accelerates Alzheimer’s research. The task is challenging for machines, easy enough for humans, but is also repetitive. In a recent interview, Eglė Ramanauskaitė, who designed Stall Catchers, explained that the organisation of the first competition is what brought 250 middle-school students to participate to Stall Catchers. She also explained that some participants will contribute to ensure they remain on top of the daily, weekly and all-time leaderboards.
Citizen scientists can help gather and analyse data, and in some projects, they can also help solve complex scientific problems. In most video games, the learning is scaffolded. Players often start with an interactive tutorial, they play through different levels, which offer the right level of challenge. They receive adapted feedback, unlock tools, get rewards that help with their progression and that help gain the level of expertise they need to master the game. They can practice, try different strategies, and sometimes collaborate with other players. Most of these elements can be found in the citizen science game EteRNA, in which players fold RNA molecules. EteRNA players became so good at folding RNA molecules that they beat supercomputer-powered algorithms and their results were published in the Journal of Molecular Biology.
Can you offer a few examples of citizen science games? What research have they contributed to?
The examples I used so far, Foldit, Stall Catchers and EteRNA, help biomedical research and there are a few more I can mention. In Phylo, players solve DNA puzzles and help genetic disease research. The game is developed by McGill University, which also recently released ColonyB, a mobile game that contribute to research on the human microbiome. Eyewire is a pretty relaxing game in which players help map the brain by coloring in neurons. Not only Eyewire players help create a detailed map of more than 1,000 neurons, they also allowed researchers to discover six new neuron types.
Some citizen science games advance the fields of quantum computing. I spent quite a lot of time on Decodoku, trying to solve quantum error on my mobile. It is a nice mix of Sudoku and 2048, and the goal is to help find a good strategy. My best score was 376, and that was already challenging! In Quantum Moves, players have twenty seconds to drag an atom and release it in the target area. The atom, represented as a wave, behaves in a quantum way and must be kept stable. Scientists study how players form their strategy and use the information to develop algorithms that can then be used by computers. By playing these games, players help build quantum computers.
In the previous examples, scientists turned a scientific problem into a game, or they added game elements to a citizen science activity. The last example I would like to introduce is Project Discovery. In this unique project, the science is not gamified, but has been integrated to EVE Online, a huge sci-fi online game. In the first iteration, EVE players were helping classify human cells. In the current iteration, they are looking for exoplanets. Players submitted more than 13.2 million classifications in the first two weeks of the release, making of Project Discovery one of the most successful citizen science project to date.
What else should readers know about citizen science games?
Some of these games are ‘casual’, everyone can play them and a few minutes of contribution can already produce valuable data. Some others are pretty ‘hardcore’, they require more time and mastering them is challenging. However, you do not need to have a scientific background to participate.
Although, don’t be put off by the word game! Games are not just about competition, they can be great collaborative and social tools, they can progressively teach complex concepts, and more importantly, citizen science games can lead to important discoveries!
This was a snapshot of citizen science games. You can look at the list and pick the one you’d like to try!
This interview was originally published on GotScience.
https://www.gotscience.org/2018/07/citizen-science-games-design-discovery/
