In Transit

- Philippa Warr

I’m squinting at a luminosity graph, scoping it out for possible signs of exoplanets. Technically I’m playing EVE Online, following assignments doled out by the NPC Professor Michel Mayor and earning in-game rewards. But the data comes from the University of Geneva, Michel Mayor is also a real astrophysicist, and the work I’m doing is contributing to the actual search for exoplanets.

Project Discovery is a collaboration between EVE developer CCP Games and the University of Geneva, which is facilitated by a company called Massively Multiplayer Online Science (MMOS). MMOS want to make it possible to integrate scientific research tasks into existing games, and thus use their player bases to conduct research. It’s a form of citizen science.

Seeding research tasks into games taps into a volunteer workforce who can conduct types or volumes of analysis that aren’t possible with computers. One of the advantages of using games, say MMOS, is that a research project can take advantage of the game’s existing player retention systems to prevent high drop out rates after the first flush of curiosity passes.

This isn’t EVE’s first foray into citizen science. Project Discovery’s first iteration tasked the game’s players with classifying images from the Human Protein Atlas. It took the form of a minigame where players identified and categorized parts of subcellular structures.

In-game this was positioned as helping an NPC faction called the Sisters of EVE to research the DNA of another faction. As with the exoplanet research, one of the scientists from the real Human Protein Atlas—Emma Lundberg—was incorporated as an NPC.