Reality is Broken so Foldit
Video-game players have solved a molecular puzzle that stumped scientists for years, and those scientists say the accomplishment could point the way to crowd sourced cures for AIDS and other diseases.
Highlighting the overall theme in “reality is broken”, that video games are more than just games and that they can have deep impacting social, political cultural effects on our society, its no surprise the game “foldit” was discussed. The basic premise of “foldit” follows a model known as citizen science where average citizens with no education in the given field perform small tasks in order to solve the issues of much larger problems. Planet Hunters is also another form of gaming and citizen science. The project uses members of the public to crunch through NASA’s Keppler mission data in search of planets outside the solar system. They have a very basic online training program, equivalent to the first few minutes of an iOS game, that teaches people what may or may not be a potential planet. The overall experience functions much like a role playing game in the way you assess, learn and apply your knowledge moving through the various clusters of potential planets. After one successfully identifies a planet, you tag it for official review and move on. Essentially NASA is using the human brain of millions of people around the world as one massive intelligent data-crunching machine. While this is exciting for some, many would consider it that boring learning game they found under the Christmas tree when they were 10. It is nonetheless designed with a game like attitude.
“Foldit” takes this concept one step further by integrating the process of protein folding into a three dimensional interactive puzzle that anyone can play. Unlike planet hunters where you feel you are performing a more scientific or educational task, playing Foldit feels more akin to an iOS or droid game. It has a remarkable level of addiction in the way it engages the player, constantly folding proteins as if they were wacky vegetable veins in a fantasy world.
Foldit attempts to apply the human brain’s natural three-dimensional pattern matching and spatial reasoning abilities to help solve the problem of protein structure prediction. Rather than just building a useful science tool, the developers of Foldit focused on designing a program that adopted the concept of gamification; the aim was to make the program more appealing and engaging to a public audience, in order to attract more people to the cause of protein folding. This was especially true for those people that did not have a scientific education or background. As the structure is modified, a “score” is calculated based on how well-folded the protein is, and a list of high scores for each puzzle is maintained. Foldit users may create and join groups, and share puzzle solutions with each other; a separate list of group high scores is maintained.
In the first 10 days of its release Foldit solved an issue that had stumped scientists for 15 years! Thus in an otherwise complicated field of study that few of us have any understanding of, researchers were able to engage thousands of people to help solve an incredibly important issue in medical research through video games. The gamification of a scientific task was thus a breakthrough. It not only outsourced the calculating element of the task, it did so at comparatively low cost had they had done it the more traditional route. More importantly the users or gamers were contributing and collaborating to a worthy cause, not simply helping a distant netizen be aware of lurking bad guy on level 7 of Bonestorm. Because it was a worthy task, there was a great sense of worth and gratification in what they gamer/user was doing, the game was returning a very real gesture of thanks back to the player.
I find it fascinating that I could be sitting on a streetcar with an iPad, twirling around a cell structure I know nothing about knowing that my little mundane tasks of matching colours and shapes are contributing to medical research.
Since the positives are so obvious, in my questions I would like to raise the discussion of the potential drawbacks or overall negativity with gamifying traditional research.
Questions?
- Do games like Foldit trivialize or undermine traditional research?
- Does the gamification of traditional research genuinely encourage users to engage in a collaborative environment or is it simply trying to capitalize on free-intelligent computing power?
- Would introducing a monetary reward for engaging in games like foldit encourage an ethical practice of medical research? (If money were offered, I’m sure some would say we’d be curing diseases by the day)
Matt K