Send data for research!
A new standard in science and research is closeness to community. This is done either through education on useful and practical topics of life, or by involving the community in collecting data for research.
To make communication with the community more accessible, individual researchers or research centers developed a series of games, which have already produced significant results.
Community contribution
Foldit is 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. This could have implications for the creation of treatments for AIDS, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.
In EteRNA, players fold RNA molecules. They became so good at folding RNA molecules that they beat supercomputer-powered algorithms and their results were published in the Journal of Molecular Biology.
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, but they also allowed researchers to discover six new neuron types.
Project Discovery is an unique science project that has been integrated to EVE Online, a huge online sci-fi 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 Project Discovery one of the most successful citizen science project to date. (Claire Baert, citizensciencegames.com)
Combine citizen science, crowdsourcing and video games and you get scientific discovery games.Â
 
 
 
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