The feats of realism EVE Online manages to weave into its makeup are nothing short of remarkable. Project Discovery marks CCP’s latest efforts to bring real-world scientific research into the EVE game experience in an initiative that champions citizen science. In short: Project Discovery is a challenging mini-game that masks players’ participation in real-life medical research.
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Project Discovery is en route to the test server singularity and was discussed at the EVE Fanfest and EVE Vegas events last year. The latter presentation is probably the most easy to access, but still runs close to the hour mark:
The gist is thus: alongside CCP, Swiss startup company Massively Multiplayer Online Science – whose aim is to “connect scientific research and videogames as a seamless gaming experience” – and Reykjavík University have launched a four-way collaboration with The Human Protein Atlas. The HPA build and provide a public database of human proteins used by “thousands” of medical research groups which you can help add to by participating in Project Discovery.
It sounds a tad complicated, I know, but CCP have typically gamified the whole thing to make it more palatable.
“Project Discovery is a classified research program founded and run by the Sisters of EVE,” reads the description on the EVE community dev blog. “Their project lead, Professor Lundberg, will recruit you and provide you with a basic tutorial to be able to recognize specific patterns in biological samples already classified by experts.”
The blurb goes on to explain that you’ll graduate from the programme and, with other graduated contributors, will be asked to analyse unique images “fresh from the lab.”
It continues: “Once enough contributors have reached a statistically accurate consensus on a task which has no solution, you will receive a boost to your Project Discovery accuracy rating. For every task you solve, the SoE will reward you with ISK and LP, as well as Analysis Points which contribute to your Project Discovery rank.”
Here’s the first impressions of YouTube chap JohnnyPew: