ZAP // CCP Games
Players of the popular massively multiplayer online RPG are helping scientists train machine learning algorithms by analyzing flow cytometry data used in immunology and cancer studies — while continuing their adventures in New Eden.
Video games give players the possibility to step away from everyday life and immerse themselves in completely different worlds. As its popularity grew, so did its potential to serve purposes that go beyond of mere entertainment.
Jérôme Waldispühla computational biologist at McGill University, has a job many would envy: exploring ways to incorporate computing in minigames to solve scientific problems.
One such example is the resolution of the “multiple sequence alignment problem”, or MSAa process that aligns similar DNA sequences or proteins to reveal evolutionary relationships and construct phylogenetic trees.
However, currently used automated methods, although fast, can produce suboptimal alignments.
In 2010, Waldispühl’s team launched , a gamified platform for citizen scientists manipulate patterns made up of colorful shapeswhich represented sequence alignments, with the aim of improving MSA accuracy.
Although this online approach has been successful and stay activeWaldispühl wanted to go beyond the MSA and explore other scientific problemswhich would require a new strategy to maintain player engagement in the long term.
To explore this possibility, Waldispühl contacted Attila Santnerfounder and executive director of (MMOS), an organization that leads collaborative science for video games and mobilizes large online communities.
From this collaboration a decisive question emerged: what other scientific problems Could they benefit from being integrated into video games?
In 2016, Szantner approached , the studio behind the famous video game , a “massive multiplayer online role playing game” (MMORPG) in which players, known as capsuleerstrace their own path in a vast science fiction universe.
“I knew EVE Online as a super unique and strange creature of the video game industry. It was a game with science fiction imagery and a community interested in science. So it really seemed like perfect combination for a citizen science initiative,” Szantner told .
“Fortunately, the CCP was also enthusiastic about the idea,” he added.
The idea gave rise to , a minigame integrated into the game’s menu. It was designed with specific research tasks and real data sets. In its first two phases, the team focused on different projects to present to capsuleers.
Players have already contributed to more than 25 million ratings from microscopy images of human cells to the and analyzed starlight curves using astronomical data to discover new exoplanets.
Flow cytometry at New Eden
A new phase began in 2020, when Ryan Brinkmanbioinformatics researcher and professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia, contacted Waldispühl.
“I was the one who brought the flow cytometry problem to EVE Online,” said Brinkman. The process of gatingthat is, defining cell groups, is manual, time-consuming and often subjectiveeven among experts.
To address this analytical bottleneck and improve reproducibility, the team once again resorted to EVE Online capsuleers. With COVID-19 dominating global attention in 2020, Project Discovery brought flow cytometry datasets into the game.
The players grouped populations of blood cells with in-game tracing tools, helping scientists understand how immune cells change during infection. Participants also received In-game rewards for your contributions.
Then, in 2024, EVE Online announced that the scope of the project was expanded to include critical diseases of the immune systemincluding cancer. The team added new visualizations such as cdensity curves on the X/Y axesto increase the quality of results produced by players.
“The community is very interested and excited about this work,” says Szantner. “The EVE Online community has been supportive of the initiative and shows a strong interest in science.”
“By its very structure, Project Discovery It’s something quite uniquebecause it truly creates this community of players that contributes constantly… it’s quite extraordinary”, disse Waldispühl.
As EVE Online approaches the 10-year mark of Project Discovery, the initiative stands as a notable example of how virtual worlds and their communities of citizen scientists can generate scientific impact not real world.
Looking to the future, the team intends to expand the platform to transform it into a comprehensive reference mapwhile also tackling an even broader range of biological research challenges.
