Playing a game could help uncover a potential cure for breast cancer, lung cancer or any number of diseases that have a genetic component. The game is called Dizeez, and it’s got some geneticists excited about using gamification for health research as a way of potentially crowdsourcing a cure.
The British Library warned: by 2020, legacy content will remain undigitized and in danger of becoming inaccessible to future generations.
Universities, libraries, museums and archives own large amounts of undigitized material in the form of photographs, audio recordings and films that are at serious risk of being lost because of the wear time has put on them. Some are well-documented and just need to be digitized and tagged accordingly, but the problem is that a lot of the materials have little to no description in them. The job of tagging them requires collective input by multiple people to guarantee that the tags are as comprehensive and impartial as they possibly can. It a costly and time consuming task, and it cannot be accurately done by recognition software.
The task of proper tagging is of utmost importance for future access, so is there a way we can motivate people to contribute to the preservation of legacy content while we still have time? Well, games of course!
Given the massive success of Fold.It and it’s crowdsourced approach to tackling protein folding to fight AIDS, it’s not surprising that other researchers are adopting this model for other applications as well.
Enter NanoDoc, a scientific simulation/puzzle game that will allow bioengineers and the general public to design nanoparticle strategies to treat cancer.
If it sounds futuristic, it totally is.
When it comes to innovation, the gamification community is well-aware of the power of a fun game with many engaged players, like the crowdsourced AIDs research game Fold.it, for example. It’s no wonder that Pandodaily editor and NYU Professor Adam Penenberg felt compelled to write an entire book on the subject entitled Play at Work: How Games Inspire Breakthrough Thinking.
We invited Adam to come on our Gamification Revolution webshow to discuss some of his findings on the innovative power of games. Check out the full video below:
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Be sure to catch our next episode on Thursday, November 7 at 1PM ET/1800 GMT, where we will feature Adweek Gamification Panelist and Boombox CEO, John Hendricks as our next guest.
“Print is out, digital is in.” These few words encapsulates the great shift occurring within the realm of mass media. With the explosive growth of digital content available on the internet, printed media is slowly falling into disfavor by reading audience. In turn, it is forcing mainstream news outlets into rethinking their modus operandi for story telling. One possible solution that has been steadily gaining credibility is the the application of newsgames, video games designed to adhere to journalistic standards.
