“I remember using ‘ on my PlayStation 3 and it inspired me," Pitchford told MobiHealthNews.
Other citizen science projects didn't ask much of their players, but instead require the hardware inside their game consoles. These include Foldit, a puzzle game launched in 2008 to predict protein 3D structure Stall Catchers, which has had participants review videos of mouse brain vessels to accelerate Alzheimer's disease research since 2016 and the aforementioned Phylo, developed by McGill researchers to map mammalian genes associated with diseases. Borderlands Science has proven that a citizen science feature in a mainstream shooter/looter with a diverse audience can be super successful, can bring enormous value to the game, and can be an empowering and fun experience to players, all while substantially contributing to scientific research." A design and deployment unique from its predecessorsīorderlands Science benefits from a long heritage of citizen science projects, some of which embraced gamification design approaches to achieve their research goals, the team wrote in nature biotechnology. "We have proven before that such integration works beautifully in a game where both the player community and. “I consider Borderlands Science a milestone project," Szantner told MobiHealthNews. Not only have 1.6 million different players solved at least a single task, each completed an average of nearly 40 puzzles for a collective total of 63.2 million total puzzles solved – a stark increase in engagement over the 350,000-plus players and the five-task average logged by its predecessor, a standalone puzzle game called Phylo, over 10 years. Now nearly half a year in, Gearbox founder and CEO Randy Pitchford and MMOS cofounder and head of research and business development Attila Szantner tell MobiHealthNews that the output of Borderlands Science has far outstripped that of previous crowdsourced videogame research projects. A deployment in the Borderlands universe offers an opportunity to reach a public not particularly exposed to science, while at the same time it opens the door to a large and strong online community of players who can carry and amplify the impact of this initiative," they wrote. "But what could be a dead end turns out to be the strength of this initiative. The fast-paced, first-person shooter-looter game filled with dark humor is primarily designed for gamers seeking adventure and action," wrote contributors on the project from McGill University, videogame science company Massively Multiplayer Online Science (MMOS) and Borderlands 3 developer Gearbox Studios in a recent nature biotechnology correspondence. "At first glance, the match between user base and scientific problem seems unlikely.
By compiling the millions of matches that players are making, and then feeding them into a sequencing algorithm, the project aims to build a higher-quality body of data that researchers could someday use to develop novel health or wellness treatments. Rather, Borderlands Science's true goal is to help artificial intelligence iron out errors when organizing and analyzing those sequences en masse. The colored blocks and puzzles that it's serving players each represent nucleotides and fragments of microbial 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequences, all of which were collected from human stool samples contributed to and sequenced by an open research platform called the American Gut Project. Their successes are rewarded with in-game currency, which players can then use to better combat the aliens, mercenaries, machines and space cultists of the main game.īut Borderlands Science has a bit more than high-score calculations going on under the hood. Taking the form of a retro-style arcade cabinet in the home base's medical bay, "Borderlands Science" has players shifting colored blocks between rows and columns to solve puzzles.
The keep on the borderlands map update#
Back in April, Borderlands 3 – a big budget, role-playing first-person shooter videogame that sold over 8 million copies within six months of its release – received a free update that introduced a new mini-game to its players.