Over 4 million Borderlands players are among the authors of scientific research

Video games and science they can get along. A new study recently published in the scientific journal Nature has revealed that as many as four million players of Borderlands contributed to research, completing a total of 135 million in-game puzzles. This action allowed scientists to track millions of intestinal bacteria.

According to the authors, the data provided by players will be used by scientists to create the next generation of improved AI programs for analyzing cells. In recognition of their efforts, both “Borderlands science players” and various Gearbox Entertainment employees were listed among the authors of the document published in the magazine.

“Here we have 4.5 million people who contributed to science“said the paper's senior author Jérôme Waldispühl, an associate professor at McGill University. “In a way, this achievement is theirs too, and they should feel proud.”

Let's delve deeper into the question

In April 2020, Borderlands 3 developer Gearbox Software teamed up with a group of biomedical researchers to create a new minigame for the popular shooter.

The objective of the project Borderlands Science was to exploit the entertainment value of video games to convert players' enthusiasm into valuable real-world scientific data, which could be used by biologists to shed light on the complex microbial ecosystem of the human body.

Each of us hosts tens of trillions of microbes and these bacteria are extremely different from each other. Despite decades of research, the incredible diversity of this biological ecosystem has prevented scientists from comprehensively understanding how different microbes affect the human body.

Collecting data using computers is also complex because it often leads to errors. Human intervention is required in order to catalog the information and the team in question decided to create a puzzle in collaboration with Gearbox and exploit gamers.

Each round of the minigame it asked players to rearrange and match rows of tiles representing sections of DNA from real microbes, to obtain a minimum score. This way, players could eliminate computer errors and format valuable DNA data, as well as earn in-game currency as an added incentive.

The end result were millions and millions of data on microbes collected by scientists.