Project Discovery: Using MMO's for Real Life Science
I recently read an article in PC Gamer's Issue 307 by Philippa Warr about Eve Online's Project Discovery (tutorial video below, which explains how the science is being incorporated into the game). Project Discovery's goal (this time--last time it was to aid in subcellular structure research) is to have the players of Eve Online help with discovering Exoplanets in real life. They do this by feeding real-life data into the game and asking players to identify planet transits across stars (again, the video explains how).
According to Ms. Warr's article, the project has "...garnered over 80 million submissions from 149,000 players..." That's a fantastic amount of data. The makers of Project Discovery incorporated mechanisms to make sure that the players are both providing accurate data and are not bots by essentially booting them from the project if their accuracy falls below a certain point (as measured by group consensus).
I'm absolutely blown away by how MMO's (Massively Multiplayer Online games) are being utilized this way, but when I stop to think about it, it makes sense. Eve Online players are already individuals interested in space and space exploration otherwise they probably wouldn't be playing the game at all. The number of people who play the game represents a huge resource for data-crunching as Project Discovery shows, and why not take advantage to do what could take years in a fraction of the time?
As mentioned above, this is not Project Discovery's first foray into using players for real science, and Eve Online isn't the only MMO to do so. Though a bit after the fact, World of Warcraft's "Corrupted Blood Incident" —which was a blood plague unleashed on the players (I remember it, nearly the whole city of Stormwind died) is used by real scientists to study epidemiology as it was, in effect, a simulation of how a real pandemic could operate.
Ms. Philippa's article ends with a mention of how scientists and game designers are planning on incorporating real life science and games in the future. It is something I think is not only cool, but will be quite beneficial to future science—and it's also quite neat to think that the next time I log into my favorite MMO I might be helping research while unwinding.
I'm absolutely blown away by how MMO's (Massively Multiplayer Online games) are being utilized this way, but when I stop to think about it, it makes sense. Eve Online players are already individuals interested in space and space exploration otherwise they probably wouldn't be playing the game at all. The number of people who play the game represents a huge resource for data-crunching as Project Discovery shows, and why not take advantage to do what could take years in a fraction of the time?
As mentioned above, this is not Project Discovery's first foray into using players for real science, and Eve Online isn't the only MMO to do so. Though a bit after the fact, World of Warcraft's "Corrupted Blood Incident" —which was a blood plague unleashed on the players (I remember it, nearly the whole city of Stormwind died) is used by real scientists to study epidemiology as it was, in effect, a simulation of how a real pandemic could operate.
Ms. Philippa's article ends with a mention of how scientists and game designers are planning on incorporating real life science and games in the future. It is something I think is not only cool, but will be quite beneficial to future science—and it's also quite neat to think that the next time I log into my favorite MMO I might be helping research while unwinding.
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