Scientific research revolves around solving complex problems, and so do computer games. In 2008, a group of scientists developed the first video game that allows non-scientists to aid research by solving puzzles based on real scientific data. That’s what they called the game foldit.

Since then, other scientists have developed similar games and contributed to fields such as genetics and physics. These games are collectively called: citizen science games Or CSG. Traditionally, researchers designed CSG games to focus on science elements rather than game elements. However, they report that this approach limits user engagement and primarily appeals to participants who already have a strong interest in science.

To overcome this challenge, a group of researchers from Switzerland, Canada, and the United States developed a CSG using game-first design principles. This means that they prioritized the entertainment aspect of the game before incorporating any scientific questions into it. They used this approach in their next game. borderlands science or BLS. The scientific objective of this game is to help researchers analyze the genome sequences of one million microorganisms from the human digestive system to understand their relationships and functions in human health. Scientifically, the analysis that the player was assisting with is called: Multiple sequence alignment.

The researchers used 953,000 sequenced fragments of genetic material called . 16S rRNA From human stool samples provided by participants. american gut project. These fragments are part of specific regions within the genome that are used to identify and compare different microorganisms. They first grouped the sequences into over 10,000 clusters, then removed outliers, and finally focused on a final set of 9,667 clusters for the game.

They designed puzzles for the BLS game based on sequences within these clusters. Players saw a grid of colorful bricks, each representing a DNA base such as A, T, C, or G. Their goal was to insert gaps between bricks based on unique patterns to improve matching and alignment of different colors and arrangements. – Matching skills used by humans when playing the game. Players had a limited number of moves, each level of the game had a score to clear before moving on to the next level, and players were challenged to find the best placement with as few moves as possible.

The researchers explained that they were not recruiting people to play the game. Instead, they released the game through an existing commercial video game called Borderlands 3. They noted that the game was released in 2020 and the data reported in the paper represents the first 16 months after release.

Researchers collected over 1.4 million puzzle solutions and filtered them based on how well they were ordered and how well they matched other players' solutions to keep only the highest quality ones. Ta. They combined the filtered solutions to create a composite alignment, which they used to construct a family tree showing the evolutionary relationships among gut microbes.

The team validated the results by comparing the alignment and tree to the results of existing alignment and tree construction methods. They showed that player-generated solutions outperformed these existing methods and improved their ability to infer microbial relationships. The researchers also investigated how BLS results can help detect meaningful biological patterns from these microorganisms. relationship. They reported that the BLS alignment grouped gut microbes based on several lifestyle factors, such as diabetes and alcohol intake, that influence the host's digestive health.

Researchers reported that more than 4 million participants have completed real-world scientific tasks since the release of BLS. This is a high retention rate compared to previous CSG efforts. They proposed that this BLS performance demonstrates that scientific tasks can be embedded within video games and achieve high levels of player engagement.

Additionally, the researchers sought feedback from players as part of the game's quality assurance. Players cited curiosity about science as the most common reason for participating. The team argued that a game-first design approach to developing citizen science games like BLS has benefits, including increasing scientific literacy among the public.

The researchers reported that BLS outperformed traditional sequence alignment methods in terms of scientific output without compromising data integrity. They concluded that the results showed that video games can provide the human resources needed to analyze vast amounts of genomic data that would otherwise be completed by small teams of scientists. Ta.

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