You are probably familiar with initiatives like Seti@Home, where you donate unused computer power to some science project that needs computer cycles. [Jeff Yoshimi] wants to borrow your most powerful computer: your brain. The reason: cancer research.
[Jeff’s] recent book, Gaming Cancer, has three examples: Eterna, Foldit, and Nanocrafter. All three make games out of creating biological molecules. With Foldit, you create proteins in a bonsai-like fashion. EteRNA is more like Sudoku for RNA. Nanocrafter used DNA strands as puzzle pieces, although it is no longer operational. Their website, amusingly, looks like it was taken over by a slot machine site and a probably AI-generated text tries to convince you that slot machines are much like fusing DNA strands.
What can these projects do? Eterna’s open vaccine challenge used gameplay to help design RNA molecules for vaccines that don’t require ultra-cold storage, and the results drove improvements in real-life vaccines.
There have been several science fiction stories that center on the idea that a game of some sort might be an entrance test to a super-secret organization (The Last Starfighter or Stargate: Universe, for example). Maybe a future science game will trigger scholarship or job offers. It could happen.
We like citizen science. Zooniverse does a good job of making it fun, but maybe not to the level of a game. You can make contributions in space, or even right here on Earth.
Totally Citizen Science works best when it feels like fun. If it feels like a game, people actually want to join in, and that’s when the magic happens.
Citizen Science, time to invent affordable insulin that no company can destroy.
Philip K. Dick’s 1959 sci-if novel “Time Out of Joint” is, I think, one of the first serious contemplations of using a game to solve a real-life problem. Of course, being that it was Philip K. Dick, the darkness inherent in the story unfolds slowly but relentlessly.
The Wachowski’s were only about 40 years late in ripping off some significant aspects of the story. They also apparently intended to steal a nice juicy plot point from Dan Simmon’s 1989 novel Hyperion, but the studios deemed that component “too confusing” for the average audience.
In some sense, Ender’s Game is in the same vein, too? Game has some greater purpose not immediately obvious?
My first thought was Emma Clayton’s The Roar, similar vein as Ender’s Game. Though Ender’s Game, the “game” was specifically presented as a training exercise for an up and coming officer, more than something fun. The Roar at least presented it as a video game, similar to Call of Duty, in the genre of families milsim.
With that stated, the perfect example of such would be the movie Toys with Robin Williams. It nailed the use of drones in warfare to a T but did so using a video game as the interface. Even General Zevo’s reasoning on why children are used borders on why such Mechanical Turk projects would be highly successful.
Hi everyone I’m the author of the book. These comments are great! I am a fan of PK Dick (I remember hanging out at “The Quill” in the 90s, where he apparently hung out as well), but have not read “Time out of joint”. I just ordered it. Ender’s game is indeed in a similar vein, though with notable differences. Genius gamers could indeed save us, that is part of the book’s argument! But in Ender’s Game there is all this separation between the game designers and the players and all this subterfuge (if I recall the plot correctly; I only read a chapter and then saw the movie). The goal here is to collectively and transparently combat a mortal threat.