By playing Borderlands Science, a mini-game within the looter-shooter video game Borderlands 3, 4.5 million gamers have helped trace the evolutionary relationships of more than a million different kinds of bacteria that live in the human gut. Credit: Gearbox
In one of the largest and most accomplished citizen science projects of all time, millions of gamers playing a very popular looter-shooter video game have exponentially increased what we know about the human microbiome.
By playing “Borderlands Science”—a mini-game within the looter-shooter video game “Borderlands 3”—these players have helped trace the evolutionary relationships of more than a million different kinds of bacteria that live in the human gut, some of which play a crucial role in health.
“We didn’t know whether the players of a popular game like ‘Borderlands 3’ would be interested or whether the results would be good enough to improve on what was already known about microbial evolution. But we’ve been amazed by the results,” said senior author Jérôme Waldispühl, an associate professor at McGill University. “In half a day, the Borderlands Science players collected five times more data about microbial DNA sequences than our earlier game, ‘Phylo’, had collected over a 10-year period.”
In addition to critical data scientists will undoubtedly utilize in future microbiome research, the project’s conclusion is clear: leveraging gamers and video game technology can dramatically boost scientific research.
“As almost half of the world population is playing with video games, it is of utmost importance that we find new creative ways to extract value from all this time and brainpower that we spend gaming. ‘Borderlands Science’ shows how far we can get by teaming up with the game industry and its communities to tackle the big challenges of our times,” said Attila Szantner, who came up with the idea of integrating DNA analysis into a commercial video game with mass market appeal. Szantner is an adjunct professor in McGill’s School of Computer Science and CEO and co-founder of MMOS.
Microbial history and disease
In “Borderlands Science,” the gamers aligned rows of tiles that represented the genetic building blocks of different microbes. They did this task and others so well that the gamers outperformed today’s best existing computer algorithms.
Ultimately, their playing led to a significantly refined estimate of the relationships of microbes in the human gut, as well as a reconstruction of microbial evolutionary histories.
“Because evolution is a great guide to function, having a better tree relating our microbes to one another gives us a more precise view of what they are doing within and around us,” said study co-author Rob Knight from the University of California San Diego.
The research team said they expect to use the generated data to relate specific kinds of microbes to what humans eat, how they age, and to many diseases—ranging from inflammatory bowel disease to Alzheimer’s.
The future of science and games
Not only did the gamers improve on the results produced by the existing programs used to analyze DNA sequences, but they also helped lay the groundwork for improved AI programs that can be used in future.
The success of “Borderlands Science” paves the way for similar projects in future video games, pushing the boundaries of the positive effect that video games can have on the world.
“Gearbox’s developers were eager to engage millions of ‘Borderlands’ players globally with our creation of an appealing in-game experience to demonstrate how clever minds playing ‘Borderlands’ are capable of producing tangible, useful and valuable scientific data at a level not approachable with non-interactive technology and mediums,” said Randy Pitchford, founder and CEO of Gearbox Entertainment Company, the company behind “Borderlands.”
McGill’s Waldispühl agrees, highlighting how the successful collaboration is a high point for science, as well.
“It shows that we can fight the fear or misconceptions that members of the public may have about science and start building communities who work collectively to advance knowledge,” concluded Waldispühl.