Gamify your PhD Winner takes you on a Fantastic Voyage Shooter

Last month the Wellcome Trust brought together 6 scientists and 21 game developers for the Gamify your PhD contest. Thomas Rawlings, a game consultant, explained the thinking behind the weekend game jam:

“Science and games are a natural fit: both are about the participant seeking to understand the rules that govern the world they find themselves in and achieving this by experiments such as trial and error.”

The games produced by the six teams were judged by Nate Lanxon (Wired.co.uk editor); Bennett Foddy (rock star game maker and Deputy Director of the Programme on the Ethics of the New Biosciences at Oxford), Charlie Hasdell (Principal Designer for the game SingStar); and Danny Altmann (Head of Pathogens, Immunology and Population Health at the Wellcome Trust). That's a panel with expertise in both game play and science.

The winner was a game based on the work of biologist Margherita Coccia, whose doctoral research focused on the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel disease. Working with a team of game developers from Clockwork Cuckoo and Force of Habit, they created Dysb'os's (or Dysbiosis), a scientifically accurate shoot-em-up. You control intestinal cells, which need to destroy oncoming bad bacteria, while letting the good bacteria survive. Accurate shooting lets you build up a mucus shield, which gives your cells protection. But if too many bad bacteria survive you lose.

That's very much the way your gut is supposed to work, at least in broad outline. Dysbiosis refers to a microbial imbalance within the body. Abnormal growth of bacteria in the small intestine is associated with irritable bowel syndrome.

Watch the demo video or download the game.

I think it's a fun concept: use tried and true game mechanics with a "story" based on science. You can't help but learn a bit of basic biology as you advance through the game.  And I appreciate the simplicity: a Fantastic Voyage-like game with fancy graphics would likely look beautiful, but I would find it harder to get into the game play than I would with a simple yet addictive shooter or puzzle game. More of those please!

Contest runners up:

• Monsieur Baguette presents RNA transcription of Saccharomyces Cerevisiae by Jane Elizabeth Anne Reid with Opposable Games (video clip only). It's a pattern matching game based on the function of the enzyme RNA polymerase II in the synthesis of RNA.

• Simalaria by Thomas Forth with Mobile Pie. This is a resource management puzzle game that models the metabolic reactions in malaria. Can you help the parasite survive?

• See the related article at BioTechniques with links to all the games.

Is the Evolution in Spore at all Realistic? Biologists Say 'No'

Imagine you could design your own primitive creature, then watch it change as it produces generation after generation of offspring. Eventually your creation becomes a spacefaring race and heads for the stars. That's pretty much the premise of the game Spore: you create a creature that "evolves" and interact with other players' creations. It's a pretty nifty-sounding idea, but does the game play have any resemblance to actual evolution? Spore creator Will Wright - and National Geographic - would certainly like you to think so.

But what do actual biologists think? John Bohannon "The Gonzo Scientist" played Spore with a team of scientists and reported on their experience in Science. Two evolutionary biologists - T. Ryan Gregory of the University of Guelph and Niles Eldredge of the American Museum of Natural History - rated the "Cell" and "Creature" stages of the game. The "Cell" stage fared OK science-wise, but the "Creature" stage got a poor review:

"The problem is that the game features virtually none of the key ingredients of evolution as we understand it," says Gregory. "There's no shared common descent between species, since every single creature in Spore can trace its lineage back to a different single-celled organism that arrives from space." Spore also lacks biological variation. "When you run into other members of your species, they are always identical clones of you." Nor does it have natural selection. "There are no consequences for dying, since you just reappear at your nest." Your organism does evolve, says Gregory, "in the sense that it changes over time, but it really has no bearing on how things evolve in the real world."
[. . . ]
You might think that Spore's fatal flaw would be that it supports intelligent design rather than Darwinian evolution. (That's what I initially thought.) But it turns out to be not even that interesting. "Spore is essentially a very impressive, entertaining, and elaborate Mr. Potato Head that uses the language of evolution but none of the major principles," conclude Gregory and Eldredge.

Bohannon has created a page at the Spaceguild Wiki that gives a more detailed report card of Spore's science. If it were a college student, it would have flunked out long ago:

Organismic biology: D-

• Cell biology: D
• Genetics: F
• Development and reproduction: D

Evolutionary processes: F

• Evolution as fact: B
• Mutation and variation: F
• Natural selection: F
• Sexual selection: F
• Genetic drift: F
• Historical contingency: D
• Constraints: D
• Evolutionary history: D

So overall pretty awful. Gregory and Eldredge also contributed a detailed explanation of why they gave Spore such poor grades for its depiction of evolution.

You may be asking yourself, why does this matter? It's only a game, right? I actually don't think it would matter much at all, if it weren't being marketed as educational.

The game's makers are clearly aiming for the highly lucrative family and education markets. "Since the game's release we've received a lot of interest from various schools and universities around the world," a Spore spokesperson wrote me in an e-mail. "So that's a good sign that there's a lot of interest in [the] academic/education community."

I would hope that any adult that bought Spore with an eye to education would use it as a way to initiate discussion of the actual science of evolution, but I suspect that that doesn't happen very often. Instead parents will buy the game and just hand it to their kids, assuming it has some educational value. And while it may keep kids entertained, they won't end up knowing any more about biology than they did before they started. Hopefully the inaccurate use of biology terms and concepts within the game won't end up confusing them when they do learn about real science.

(via The Loom)

Image: Punky Quillibra, the creature created by evolutionary biologists T. Ryan Gregory and Niles Eldredge. They were able to change every component of Punky's body in a single generation, a game feature that is totally unlike evolution.

Previous Posts:

• Spore and Astrobiology
• Spore: You Control Evolution
  

Tags:evolution, Spore

Spore and Astrobiology

Thursday, September 7th, Electronic Arts will release their new game Spore. One of the game's novel features is the ability to design your own creatures that evolve as the game progresses.

It turns out that game designer Will Wright drew on the work of astrobiologist Jill Tarter - director of the Center for SETI research - in developing Spore. They sat down at The Seed Salon to discuss "gaming and science, the value of scientific revolutions, and advanced life in the universe", not to mention evolution and the "intelligent design" in the game universe.




Carl Zimmer had an article in Sunday's New York Times, "Gaming Evolves", takes a closer look at computer modeling of evolution and the way the process is depicted in Spore.

Evolutionary biologists like Dr. Near and Dr. Prum, who have had a chance to try the game, like it a great deal. But they also have some serious reservations. The step-by-step process by which Spore’s creatures change does not have much to do with real evolution. “The mechanism is severely messed up,” Dr. Prum said.

Nevertheless, Dr. Prum admires the way Spore touches on some of the big questions that evolutionary biologists ask. What is the origin of complexity? How contingent is evolution on flukes and quirks? “If it compels people to ask these questions, that would be great,” he said.

Paleontologist Neil Shubin, discoverer of the Tiktaalik fossil, which has a form intermediate between fish and amphibians, also gave Spore a positive review:

Dr. Shubin found that Spore gave players a feel for how evolution uses the same basic tool kit to produce different body plans. “Playing the game,” he said, “you can’t help but feel amazed how, from a few simple rules and instructions, you can get a complex functioning world with bodies, behaviors and whole ecosystems.”

Spore also mimicked evolution in another way that pleased Dr. Shubin. “Will asked me, ‘Why did creatures evolve to walk on land?’ ” he recalled. “I mentioned that the freshwater ecosystems of the Late Devonian were pretty predator-intensive. He smirked.”

Not surprisingly, however, the game doesn't accurately reflect the mechanisms of evolution.

In the real world, new traits evolve as mutations arise and spread gradually through entire populations. Winning Spore’s DNA points does not work even as a remote metaphor.

“I do hope that it doesn’t confuse people as to what evolution is all about,” said Charles Ofria, a computer scientist at Michigan State University and a creator of Avida.

Spore may also mislead players with the way it is set up as a one-dimensional march of progress from single-cell life to intelligence. Evolution is more like a tree than a line, with species branching in millions of directions. Sometimes species become more complex, and sometimes they become less so. And sometimes they do not change at all. “There’s no progressive arrow that dominates nature,” Dr. Prum said.

So the game seems to get a few concepts right, but misses on the basic mechanisms and the bigger picture that there is no such thing as evolutionary "progress". Is that a problem? It may be, since National Geographic is running a special, "How to Build a Better Being", that seems to promote Spore as an accurate depiction of evolutionary biology. Here's their promo:

The hour-long program is structured around evolutionary/gene stories from the human body. Providing scaffolding for this challenging subject, video game designer Will Wright, inventor of the best-selling SimsCity and The Sims, is developing a new game based on evolution. Its called Spore-- a fantastic voyage from gene pool to interstellar space -- and it offers an amazing way to dive deeper into the science behind evolution. Wright visits the labs of top scientists and we draw upon Spores Pixar-quality animation to connect the dots behind the billion-year history of the human body.

That certainly doesn't make it sound like the special is going to spend much time on the inaccuracies in the way Spore depicts evolution.

As biochemist Larry Moran put it:

But why can't we have our cake and eat it too? Why can't we promote evolution but do it in a scientifically accurate manner? It's abundantly clear to all scientists that the general public knows little about evolution and what little they know is mostly wrong. Do we have to cater to those false impressions?

What effect is it going to have in the long run if we misrepresent science by pretending that evolution is progressive and ladder-like and leads eventually to us—or at least leads to intelligent animals? Is anyone else concerned about this?

Yes, Spore is "just a game", but it's being promoted on the basis of the in-game science, which is what I find troubling. People learn ideas from games and other forms of pop culture, even if they aren't conscious of it, and giving Spore the National Geographic stamp of approval may cause game players to lend more credence to it's depiction of evolution than it deserves.

Watch the promo videos for "How to Build a Better Being"

(Seed Salon video via The Loom)

Tags:Spore, astrobiology, evolution

Win a Wii! Space Squid - Mushroom Men Writing Contest

Space Squid has announced a free writing contest based on the game Mushroom Men:

Contest Details:
- Deadline August 1st, 2008
- Write a story that incorporates the universe of the Mushroom Men console game, published by Gamecock Media. Entrants should read the game background information before submitting their entries.
- Free writing contest entries should be between 500 and 1500 words.
- Submit writing contest entries to Space Squid as an attached RTF file. Please put "Free Writing Contest: YOUR STORY TITLE" in the subject line.
- Submissions will be judged according to a) How well they adhere to the game universe, and b) How much they rock.
- First prize is a free Wii game console, the Mushroom Men videogame, and publication in Space Squid.
- Runners up prizes TBA and publication in RevolutionSF.com.
- This is a free writing contest; multiple entries encouraged.

Additional information and updates here and at:
http://www.revolutionsf.com/bb/weblog.php?w=5&category=Space%20Squid

Here's a taste of the Mushroom Men universe:

An ichorous green meteor plummets through the Earth's atmosphere, fracturing and showering the earth with glowing green space dust that affects all forms of life nearby. Some plant life -- mushrooms and cacti -- acquire sentience while, the meteor twists and mutates other life forms, transforming insects and animals into semi-intelligent, warlike communities.
[. . .]
Some among the four Mushroom Men tribes believe that the secret to winning the Spore War lays in uncovering the facts about the Mushroom's origins. As the myth states, the Mushroom who discovers the truth of this mystery is promised the power to change the entire course of evolution, putting the Mushroom species at the top of the evolutionary ladder. The tribe that claims this prize can reshape the world any way they see fit. The Amanitas Empire and The Lepiota Order see the myth as a chance to not only defeat the other nations (the Bolete Tribe and the Morel Brotherhood) but also wipe out all of their enemies and put their tribes at the forefront of terrestrial evolution.

If you are interested in submitting a story, be sure to read all the background information.

(via Mike Brotherton)

Tags:Mushroom Men, writing contest, Space Squid

Spore: You control evolution

Everybody is talking about Spore, the new Electronic Arts game that lets you create your own creature - and save the galaxy! Terry Johnson, io9's resident biogeek, has an interesting post on the evolution aspects of the game, which he calls "a good balance between scientific fact and playability."

Your critter's biology - the choices that you made while creating and upgrading your creature - will influence the culture that develops as your creature moves into the civilization phase of the game. Twitchy many-eyed herbivores built by nature to constantly search for and flee from trouble do not easily develop into Klingons. The game is likely to be more forgiving than evolution, but one can imagine a player sighing, "The appendix...what was I thinking?" [. . .] Environment, change, and consequence aren't the whole story, but they are a pretty good introduction. As a teacher I've always been interested in entertainment that manages to educate without being obnoxious. If science is done entirely without a sense of play it ends up being wearisome and fruitless.

PZ Myers agrees that it's fun to play with, but he thinks it's "not going to be about evolution, no matter what their PR says — I've read the blurbs, and it's all non-evolutionary." Hmmm. Since the actual game isn't out yet, I think we'll have to wait and see.

While the game and the full-function version of creature creator aren't free, you can download a free trial version of the creature creator to play with. Unfortunately it won't run on my laptop so I can't give you a first-hand account. You can watch this video to see how it works:



Tags:Spore, evolution