Side quests for science

Integrating science tasks in commercial games

Thank you very much to all of you who are reading and discussing these science-based posts about video games! I am having a lot of fun doing the research and writing about them and your engagement is encouragement for me to keep going. If there are any topics or studies that you want me to cover, please let me know!

Hello Scientist Gamers!

Gamers and science enthusiasts, I have a mission for you.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use your gaming skills towards solving some of the most important scientific challenges. By playing games, you could help design new treatments for diseases, discover new functions for proteins, and protect our planet. Your contributions in the pixelated world can have real-world impacts far beyond the digital landscape!

In the previous issues we looked at the effects gaming had on people. But today, you are taking center stage. The everyday gamer-turned-scientist can help researchers tackle some of their biggest challenges. And all you have to do is play a game.

Can you mix video games and science?

In the last 20 years, more researchers have published scholarly articles about video games than ever before, highlighting their use beyond entertainment. Often, these non-entertainment applications of video games require tailored game development, which can miss the mark in engaging gamers. For a niche like science games, engagement is crucial because there aren’t a lot of science game players.

Screen capture of number of articles listed in PubMed using the search term “video games”

One way to get around the engagement issue is to use mainstream games. But mainstream games aren’t made considering science and someone has to find a way to make them useful. Plus, the engagement dilemma still exists: many gamers like switching between multiple games, meaning the window to capture their interest for scientific tasks is limited. The integration of science games into mainstream games has to be clever and compelling to maximize gamers’ interactions.

Enter Borderlands Science — a tile-matching mini-game within the popular shooter-looter title Borderlands 3. The twist is that this tile-matching puzzle game is helping researchers align almost a million RNA sequences against one another.

Why align sequences at all?

Before we talk about how the researchers developed Borderlands Science, let’s talk about why the underlying science is important. Aligning any sequence — DNA, RNA, or protein — allows researchers to identify regions of those sequences that are the same, similar, or different.

Example sequence alignment from this article. The far left column shows species names with their corresponding RNA sequences for the same piece of RNA. The coloured boxes show sequences that are the same no matter what species you look at. These regions usually have an important function. The non-coloured sequences are much more variable (and likely not as important for function).

These regions can provide clues about the function of each of those regions as well as the potential cause of some diseases. It can even help us understand the evolutionary relationships of these sequences to each other.

In order to create these alignments in the first place, researchers use tools specifically designed to align multiple sequences against each other. But the researchers weren’t interested in creating another tool — their interest was more about whether or not science tasks could be incorporated into mainstream games in a way that is fun but also useful for science. So how did the researchers take the sequence of letters and turn it into a game?

How the researchers turned science into a game

The key realization, with game design experts at the helm, was realizing that the way sequences can be aligned to each other is similar to a tile-matching game. By presenting the player with a small portion of the sequence that needs to be aligned, and then taking these small portions and stringing them together, researchers could get the alignments that they needed.

Screenshot of Borderlands Science mini-game, taken from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-024-02175-6

There were two more considerations: the aesthetic of the mini-game had to fit within the Borderlands 3 universe, and the pace of the mini-game had to match the fast-paced shooter-looter action.

To say that the game designers succeeded is a mild understatement. As of May 2023 when the analysis for this article began, 4 million players had completed the 10 minute tutorial and at least one tile-matching game. These 4 million human supercomputers solved a whopping 135 million tile-matching puzzles!

What the researchers found

When researchers compared the alignments from Borderlands Science to those produced using traditional tools, they found that the quality of the alignment was as good and in some cases better.

More importantly, Borderlands Science showed that complex science tasks like multiple alignment can be incorporated into a mainstream game. But there are some considerations for making it work:

1. the game mechanics have to make sense to the player and the researcher analyzing the game results

2. the game has to fit within the context of the game

3. the game can’t break immersion for the player

These three considerations can address the engagement dilemma as they make the mini-game not feel like a task. In-game rewards can provide even more incentive for players to play the integrated mini-game.

What does this all mean?

The success of Borderlands Science can be a beacon to other game designers and researchers looking to incorporate scientific tasks within a mainstream game. As long as it makes sense, fits within the game, and doesn’t break immersion, any number of scientific tasks that can be turned into a puzzle-like game can potentially be incorporated as a mini-game.

3D protein structures is a good example of a scientific task that could be incorporated as a mini-game. It already is a standalone game that you can play right now (fold.it) but I can imagine this being a “build challenge” in a game like Fortnite.

Screenshot of a fold.it game

Like sequence alignments, protein structures are built with rules. But the current game can be overwhelming for some to look at. One way to make this more accessible would be to map out each of these components to game objects in Fortnite and then create a set or rules around the build challenge. Researchers can then analyze the best Fortnite structures as they get mapped back to the protein components.

Fortnite has a massive player base but there is an equally massive database of protein structures that need solving. It’s a continuous source of puzzle materials for an ever-present game, which sounds like the perfect mix for gamers to participate in solving scientific challenges.

Watchouts

Designing games that captivates players and provides scientifically relevant data will remain a challenge that must be tackled jointly by game designers and scientists. There may be more considerations other than the ones listed above so not all of the implementations will be as successful as Borderlands Science.

The future is bright for video games and science, especially when we can harness the collective brain power of an entire gaming community! I’m personally looking forward to more game designers and researchers working together to find innovative ways to integrate science into video games.

If you’re interested in reading the paper for yourself, it is available for free here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-024-02175-6