I've rambled quite a bit over the past years about trying to get more lay or otherwise skilled people contributing to science directly or indirectly. F@H has been a great example of getting a large number of people donating their computing cycles to science. Additional incentives to do so would only further the success of this low level biology research that will eventually pay significant dividends towards longevity research. An ImmInst initiated project (grassroots volunteer effort more likely, akin to the F@H prize) could serve this purpose as well as bring more attention (which leads to more credibility, volunteers, funding, etc) to the organization and meme.
One idea that has been floated by myself and others (both here and elsewhere) has been the creation of games that benefit science. A folding game has been created by David Baker's protein folding group but it's success has been limited thus far. I suspect that this limited success is due mostly to the fact that it's less a game and more or less just a tedious challenge of guesswork, and a rather difficult one at that. Essentially, it just feels like work. My idea is to build something a bit more enjoyable that leverage the existing base of protein folders and see if we can extend through viral means into a larger community of gamers and even the general public.
I've been working with a small group of people brainstorming this concept, everything from gameplay, genre, software development, funding, recruitment, timing, marketing, etc but didn't really want to bring it forth here until I was confident that it had the potential to evolve from drawing board to prototype.
So here's the idea:
* The game would be a "slow roll" multiplayer game where users can log in via a website and use their folding points as credits towards gameplay. As the credits come in (are distributed via Stanford's points server), they are used as the fuel that allows the player to engage in gameplay, e.g. building units, structures, etc. that advance gameplay.
* Given the meme, some futuristic genres have been discussed and one based on building offensive and defensive structures and units to protect and develop your own little galactic utopian outpost has been used during the straw man discussions.
* To play, users sign in and provide their folding team and user name to set up an account. Folding points would be translated into a trickle over the next 3 hours so as hours and days passed, users could log in and put those credits to work turning their outpost into an empire. (insert star wars music here)
* A combat system would exist for outposts to attack and defend. Credits and captured units would be the booty for successful raids of the other outposts within the game.
* The details of the units, structures and combat system are out of scope for this discussion but quite a bit of thought and evaluation of existing game-types has been put into the effort. Without an enjoyable and balanced gaming experience, multi-player games rarely go viral.
* A recruitment bonus would exist for inviting new players (and thus extending the contributing folder base, the primary goal of such an effort).
* Initially, Stanford Folding could serve as the credit input but other/future bioinformatics efforts could also be used as points-to-credit sources. Even non distributed computing divide-and-conquor-style-projects such as those done by Amazon's Mechanical Turk could be added, perhaps directly to the game interface itself.
So this is just to get the idea out there for discussion. Thoughts, ideas, issues, etc. Provide them here in this thread.
If you're interested in getting involved as a developer, playtester or financial contributor we'll likely be recruiting those in the coming months as well though PM me if you have 7-digit donations to make ASAP
... otherwise just ponder and discuss the pros and cons of such an effort.
Edited by maestro949, 10 January 2009 - 10:11 PM.
