Professor explains how MMORPG players help fight cancer

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There is a project running in the MMORPG EVE Online in which gamers support science through their gaming. They are currently providing valuable data for cancer research. A professor emphasizes how important gamers are for research and that it should change the way the world looks at gaming.

What kind of project is this?

  • The project is called “Project Discovery” and takes place in the MMORPG EVE Online.
  • Players help analyze scientific data by playing mini-games in EVE Online.
  • In the game they get rewards for this, and science receives valuable data. Because the players analyze data better through their gaming than scientists could. And that’s not because they are more attentive, but because there are simply so many gamers.

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    Mini-games in EVE Online help with cancer research

    How does it work? As you can see in a German YouTube video, previous mini-games in EVE Online revolved around framing collections of points to mark a cluster.

    In the last two phases, players dealt with data related to the human body’s immune system. They looked for different types of cells in the blood.

    The project website states (via eve):

    You will analyze data produced by flow cytometers. Using a tracing tool to draw polygons around cell clusters, you will help analyze crucial cancer-related data and train AI models to deliver results with comparable accuracy.

    This effort will help scientists decipher how our immune systems interact with and fight cancer, paving the way for potential breakthroughs in treatment and understanding.

    Many do it for the rewards – others for the pride of helping science

    Why do players participate? As the EVE Online Creative Director knows, many players participate in Project Discovery for the in-game rewards. But there are also some who participate out of pride in being involved in such a scientific project.

    In this way, non-scientists would also engage with science.

    500 players are better than 1 scientist

    Why are gamers important for cancer research? Dr Ryan Brinkmann says:

    The question everyone is asking is: Can gamers do what scientists do? We had scientists sit down and play the game that gamers play day in and day out, and we asked them to analyze the data as best they could. And then we compared those scientists to hundreds of gamers analyzing the same action.

    Here we were able to take advantage of that because, unlike a scientist looking at one graph, we have 500 players looking at that one graph. We developed some bioinformatics mathematical technology to filter out what we think are the best solutions from those 500 players. When we compare those best solutions to the scientists’ solutions… the players do better. That’s the real reason why the players do better, because there are more of them.

    So the advantage is that 500 players who do it on the side will get better results than a scientist who does it professionally.

    Players are an essential tool for shaping science in the future

    And what impact does this have: Jerome Waldispuhl, Professor of Computer Science at MCGill University says:

    Project Discovery is about giving players the opportunity to contribute to science, but what’s special about it is that it shows that games are an essential tool for shaping science in the future…

    This community is really helping to change society by basically bringing this collective power to bring science into society through a digital game. And I think that should drastically change the perception that everyone has of what games bring to the world these days.

    Such actions are certainly suitable for creating a more positive image of gaming and MMORPGs in the public eye. Just a few years ago, the public often reported on gaming in a purely negative way: “Gaming Disorder” – Are we all sick?

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