Author: Sean Krivitsky, Class of 2026

Figure 1. Oil painting visualization of a video game player.

Citizen science is a common strategy employed by researchers across many specializations to harness the input of the public to further scientific research. The billions of video game players worldwide posed an opportunity for scientists using citizen science and, from there, emerged Citizen Science Games (CSGs). However, converting scientific tasks to a video game format has proved daunting, with many researchers often struggling to gain input from the general public and relying on a few experts due to the complex nature of many games produced. Recently, researchers at McGill University led by Roman Sarrazin-Gendron revolutionized the CSG landscape by focusing on improving the gamification aspect of these initiatives to gain more attention from the general public, making them more accessible to a layperson.

The goal of the scientists was to develop a CSG that optimized the level of gamification to improve input volume from video game players to solve various scientific puzzles that corresponded to multiple sequence alignments (MSAs). MSAs are a computational biology technique that involves aligning several biological sequences together to better understand evolutionary relationships between different species. These researchers’ CSG used public input to improve the MSA of 1 million 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) sequences used for human microbiome analysis. Rather than beginning with the scientific tasks, they instead began by partnering with a major video game company called Borderlands with many millions of users. They then created a branch called Borderlands Sciences (BLS) and produced a game related to this original series that people can play to solve sequence alignment tasks while being more engaged due to the authentic video game features of the tasks. Compared to previous efforts, BLS identified through data analysis of their project that they have gained over four million players who, together, have solved several million science puzzles every month for the several years the project was left operational. 

Ultimately, this achievement by the researchers leading BLS is significant because it revolutionizes the field of CSG’s and their applications. The project earned several million more players engaging in their game who solved more puzzles on average than players engaging in previous CSG attempts. This is especially significant because this optimized methodology for CSG’s, prioritizing gamification to maximize public engagement, can now be used to harness the problem-solving power of millions of people through these puzzles, a more powerful and effective form of problem-solving power than even the most advanced computational methods.

Works Cited

[1] Sarrazin-Gendron, R., Ghasemloo Gheidari, P., Butyaev, A., Keding, T., Cai, E., Zheng, J., Mutalova, R., Mounthanyvong, J., Zhu, Y., Nazarova, E., Drogaris, C., Erhart, K., Brouillette, A., Richard, G., Pitchford, R., Caisse, S., Blanchette, M., McDonald, D., Knight, R., … Waldispühl, J. (2024, April 15). Improving microbial phylogeny with citizen science within a mass-market video game. Nature News. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-024-02175-6#Sec10 

[2] Image retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oil_Painting_of_a_Gamer.png