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Leveling up citizen science

Nature Biotechnology volume 38, pages 1124–1126 (2020)Cite this article

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To the Editor — Over the past decade, online science discovery games (SDGs) have become an increasingly popular practice for engaging the public in research activities. This methodology has had the most impact in molecular and cell biology, where participants are recruited for not only data collection and classification tasks, but also solving complex computational problems that require human supervision or insight. As the life sciences move toward increasingly large and ambitious projects, however, there is a need to complement existing models that try to attract users to yet another third-party website. Here we describe our experience with Borderlands, a massively multiplayer online game that embeds citizen-science problems into its virtual universe and engages a new user base, with implications for future citizen science initiatives seeking to meet the growing demands of biology.

Since 2008, the Foldit team has recruited online participants to predict protein 3D structure via a 3D puzzle game distributed as a standalone program for personal computers1. This project helped refine a retroviral protease structure2 and later discovered novel protein folds3. Two years later, Phylo4 pushed the gamification concept to reach a broader public by crowdsourcing comparative genomics tasks via tile-matching puzzle games. Other successful projects include web-based games for RNA structural modeling (for example, EteRNA5) and neuron segmentation (for example, EyeWire6).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada

    Jérôme Waldispühl

  2. Massively Multiplayer Online Science, Monthey, Switzerland

    Attila Szantner

  3. University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA

    Rob Knight

  4. Gearbox Studio Québec, Québec, Québec, Canada

    Sébastien Caisse

  5. Gearbox Entertainment Company, Frisco, Texas, USA

    Randy Pitchford

Authors
  1. Jérôme Waldispühl
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  2. Attila Szantner
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  3. Rob Knight
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  4. Sébastien Caisse
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  5. Randy Pitchford
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jérôme Waldispühl.

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Competing interests

J.W. is supported by a Genome Canada grant (Genomic Applications Partnership Program) that is co-funded by Gearbox Studio Québec Inc. and Massively Multiplayer Online Science (MMOS Sàrl). A.S. is the CEO of Massively Multiplayer Online Science (MMOS), which operates the middleware of Borderlands Science. MMOS received operating fees from Gearbox Studio Québec Inc. S.C. is co-studio head and director of operations at Gearbox Studio Québec Inc., which develops the game Borderlands 3 and the citizen science game Borderlands Science. R.P. is president of Gearbox Entertainment Company Inc., which develops the game Borderlands 3 and the citizen science game Borderlands Science. Borderlands Science is a free mini-game available within the Borderlands 3 game, but Borderlands 3 is sold as a premium game.

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Waldispühl, J., Szantner, A., Knight, R. et al. Leveling up citizen science. Nat Biotechnol 38, 1124–1126 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-020-0694-x

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