Gaming Cancer: How Citizen Science Games Could Help Cure Disease

Summary

Gaming Cancer: How Citizen Science Games Could Help Cure DiseaseBy inviting players to tackle real scientific problems, games can offer a hand in solving medicine’s toughest challenges.Screenshot from the game Nanocrafter, a synthetic biology game created to educate and entertain players while advancing science.BeeLine Reader uses subtle color gradients to help you read more efficiently.Consider a gamer playing a game. Maybe one of them is in a room near you right now. You hear periodic outbursts of anger and joy. They’ve been at it for hours. These games might be easy to pick up, but they sure aren’t easy to win. As Atari founder Nolan Bushnell said, “The best games are easy to learn and difficult to master.”What is it about humans that keeps us glued to a game console for hours on end? One answer is evolutionary: We’re natural problem solvers. This same drive continues to benefit us today. Scientists, for instance, spend years mastering their fields — writing tedious grant proposals, culturing cells for hours, and enduring decades of training. Their persistence leads to better medicine, better technology, a better world.Games exploit this evolved tendency; they appeal to the ancient circuitry in us that strives to figure things out. Game designers create a virtual embodiment of some kind of problem-solving situation — escaping an enemy, defeating an opponent, making it to the next level, unlocking a skill — and they make it easy and intuitive to start playing. They lure you in with easy wins and progress. But over time, it gets harder and harder, and in the end, to win, you must thread a narrow path through action space, doing just the right things, in the right order, to achieve your goal.Games appeal to the ancient circuitry in us that strives to figure things out.These remarkable parallels can be put to good and surprising use, as I argue in my book, “Gaming Cancer.” Cancer remains an unsolved problem, and thousands of scientists worldwide are working diligentl...