Foldit Gamers Come Up With Scientific Strategies
A few weeks ago, scientists announced that players of the protein folding game Foldit helped unlock the structure of an AIDS-related enzyme researchers had been working on for a decade.
It was the first time a crowd-sourced science experiment solved an important science challenge.
Researchers at the University of Washington had a closer look at the strategies that enabled players to achieve that result. They concluded that gamers who were provided tools for creating, editing, sharing and rating game-playing recipes within the Foldit game came up with at least one recipe, called Blue Fuse, offered a "striking resemblance" to a "scientist-built", but unpublished algorithm called Fast Relax.
"With our previous papers, we proved that a scientific-discovery game can solve long-standing scientific problems, but this paper shows how gamers codified their strategies, shared them and improved them. This is just the beginning of what Foldit players are capable of solving," explained Seth Cooper, the primary architect and co-creator of Foldit and the creative director of the Center for Game Science.
The authors of the paper said they monitored 721 Foldit gamers over a period of three months and discovered a considerable trend toward collaboration as well as a "remarkably flexible nature of the gamer intelligence," which is inspired by human intuition and creative game play that allows users to employ certain tasks at different stages.
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The brain, put them together and it is still the worlds greatest supercomputer..
Isn't this the premise for Stargate Universe? Gamer plays MMO, solves incredibly complex mathematical formula, unlocks 9th chevron, then delivers 1.5 seasons of crappy shows? (They actually cancelled Atlantis over this.) *Roll eyes*
Anyway, as a hardcore gamer myself, I have always believed we are more than the box the world tries to put us in.
lol, cant wait the next time some old fuddy-duddy calls me a no good gamer.. We just helped unlock the structure of an AIDS related enzyme.... Now let me get back to gaming..
btw, your welcome.
and I do fold@home
Analytical games such as Foldit and other puzzle solving types? sure.... FPS games where you just kill everything in sight? Yeah not so much.
Isn't this the premise for Stargate Universe? Gamer plays MMO, solves incredibly complex mathematical formula, unlocks 9th chevron, then delivers 1.5 seasons of crappy shows? (They actually cancelled Atlantis over this.) *Roll eyes*Anyway, as a hardcore gamer myself, I have always believed we are more than the box the world tries to put us in.
Yeah, exactly. I don't get it either. SG-Atlantis was a great show with a really good cast. SG-U was a confused mix-mash of ideas and a much weaker cast that failed to achieve the same synergy that made SG1 and SGA so good.
As for Foldit, that is pretty damn cool! They ought to see about getting us gamers working on creating something like ZPMs... because wind and solar just aren't going to cut it.
This news article only came out about 2 months ago.
Aw, I thought SGU had 1 good episode first season, and maybe 3-4 second season.
Anyways... yea. Human intuition. Still can't match it with a computer yet.
Isn't this the premise for Stargate Universe? Gamer plays MMO, solves incredibly complex mathematical formula, unlocks 9th chevron, then delivers 1.5 seasons of crappy shows? (They actually cancelled Atlantis over this.) *Roll eyes*Anyway, as a hardcore gamer myself, I have always believed we are more than the box the world tries to put us in.
+9999
SGU was starting to get a bit better....
The brain, put them together and it is still the worlds greatest supercomputer..
when it comes to quick reaction and instant calculations, maybe.
Calculations: not so much (still can't do Pi*5235/63627 instantly)
They don't care about the gamers they only care about the strategies they use(algorithms).Those bigbrothers bozos use the players like rats lab then stole their ideas and make the companies profit from that,data mining is a very profitable bussines.
The gamers knew exactly what was going to happen with the gathered data when they started playing. It isn't at all an invasion of privacy when you say, "Yeah, I'll help you solve that," and then they actually use your help.
If you're gonna wear a tinfoil hat, go right ahead. It's your life. But at least make sense. The tinfoil is to protect your thoughts, not your car.
Yeah, i'd never help scientists discover a cure for human plagues... they'd only distribute it to sick people... /sarc
Supertrek32 - You're asking the tinfoil brigade to make sense, or even check their facts. Good luck with that.
Scientists: Congratulations guys, you came up with what we knew a long time ago. Keep up the good work and you might catch up with us in 20 years.