Many games and series change over time thanks to the influence of their player communities. For instance, the Command and Conquer Remastered Collection soundtrack includes music performed by a fan-made band called the Tiberian Sons. CCP Games’ spacefaring sandbox MMORPG EVE Online has grown exponentially since it released in 2003, and its growing fanbase has afforded the developers unique opportunities.
EVE Online has one shard server, creating a “shared universe,” according to CCP Games Creative Director Bergur Finnbogason, and Community Developer Dan Crone said the team encourages players to reach out so the developers’ platform can be used to advertise community events. This year, one event included a battle for Chappy78, a terminally-ill player, and CCP created a permanent memorial site called Molea Cemetery that officiates a roleplaying project one player started in 2007. Game Rant spoke to members of CCP Games and the scientific community they have been connected to through Massively Multiplayer Online Science (MMOS) about the game’s recent efforts to help combat the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The popular MMO announced the third phase in its “Project Discovery” initiative would be dedicated to analyzing COVID-19 data this June. Project Discovery is essentially crowdsourcing scientific research by turning otherwise menial or time-consuming tasks into mini-games that fit EVE Online‘s narrative. Its first iteration five years ago saw players helping The Human Protein Atlas, an open-access Swedish project to “map all the human proteins in cells, tissues, and organs.” Finnbogason said this set the ground rules for what kind of projects CCP would take: Those with altruistic, thematically-adoptable goals which include huge volumes of difficult data that can be broken into consistent, short-term tasks. According to MMOS CEO Attila Szantner,
“With EVE Online we found a perfect partner who was committed and supportive from the beginning. As we spend more time in video games, it is imperative for society to find ways to extract as much value from this time as possible. EVE’s Project Discovery is one way of doing that, and will hopefully inspire others to set up collaborations.”
Project Discovery’s second phase in 2017 looked at data from the CoRoT space telescope that operated between 2006 and 2013, looking for planets outside of this Solar System. Finnbogason said CCP Games reached out to MMOS after the coronavirus pandemic broke out to see if they could use EVE Online‘s “citizen science” to help. They were put in touch with flow cytometry research being spearheaded by Andrea Cossarizza, Vice Dean at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia’s School of Medicine; Jerome Waldispuhl, Project Lead at DNA Puzzles; and Ryan Brinkman, Medical Genetics Professor at the University of British Columbia.
Players, called Capsuleers in EVE Online, are analyzing data files from patients who have pneumonia caused by SARS-CoV-2, according to Cossarizza – former President of the International Society For Advancement of Cytometry (ISAC). In essence, flow cytometry is being used through EVE to learn how the immune system responds to infections by “gating” different clusters of cells that are fighting the infection, preparing for future infections, and more as they appear on a scatterplot graph.
Giving this task to humans solves the clustering problem, which Waldispuhl said is a “fundamental” issue in computer science and AI because identifying these clusters requires a consensus of subjective interpretations. “There is no universally accepted mathematical function that tells us with 100 percent confidence if a cluster exists or not,” according to Waldispuhl. However, Brinkman said they hope the millions of results gathered through this project will help train machine-learning algorithms, and thus Project Discovery’s data will be available to the wider scientific community for research on cancer, stem cells, and more.
In an email provided to Game Rant on September 29, 2020, it was said Project Discovery’s phase three had already submitted 41.1 million data classifications. Each of these annotations consist of multiple datapoints, according to Waldispuhl, and converting the collective participation into its full-time equivalent means about 150 years of work have already been sunk into the project (using estimated 40-hour work weeks at 48-to-50 weeks per year).
No doubt one reason there has been so much participation in this project is that the pandemic it combats has left many unemployed or working from home. CCP Games Brand Director Sæmundur Hermannsson said there has been an increase in activity and new players due to COVID-19. “However, we do not feel it is appropriate to celebrate a growth of the community due to consequences of a global pandemic,” Hermannsson said. “Instead, we are humbled that we are in a position to help people get through these challenging times.”
The MMO developer has continued to put out content in spite of global conditions. Earlier this month, EVE Online announced its Phoenix Quadrant update. It is considered the end of a year-long storyline that began with the introduction of an alien race called the Triglavian Collective. Players chose whether to side with the aliens or established empires, and the story climaxed with Triglavian forces conquering 27 systems henceforth shut off from the rest of known space on October 13. Phoenix will center around the aftermath of this invasion. Finnbogason said,
“There is a delicate balance between introducing big, new features while also nurturing and maintaining the existing ones. We recognize that our core community is still in need of regular updates to keep the meta fresh.”
As a Community Developer, Crone compares this developer-side content creation to throwing more spades and buckets into the sandbox, but said CCP Games is more of a groundskeeper than a curator in terms of letting its Capsuleers drive the content. In early October, EVE Online hosted a record-breaking PvP battle that featured over 8,800 players. However, part of what makes that accomplishment so special is that it was just the latest part of a conflict with roots going back to 2016.
Four years ago, a number of player alliances collectively known as the Money Badger Coalition (MBC) pushed what was, and is still, one of the most powerful coalitions in the game called The Initiative into a far corner of nullsec (or null security space, outside the range of NPC police forces where players can claim sovereignty over star systems). This was called World War Bee, or The Casino War to members of The Initiative, according to Crone. Since then, The Initiative has regained power in the “Delve” region of New Eden, EVE Online‘s open-world map, but other players took notice of this expansion.
Former members of MBC and other coalitions came together to form PAPI, what CCP calls a super-coalition, and kicked off the latest player-driven intergalactic war by breaking a non-invasion pact. The record-breaking PvP battle was fought over PAPI attempting to dock a Keepstar, EVE‘s largest player-owned structure (reminiscent of the Death Star from Star Wars), so other ships could use it as an operating base and easily access 71 percent of the Delve region’s 97 star systems.
Crone said this war is exciting because its outcome is uncertain, and could impact the game for “decades to come” given its roots are directly and indirectly traced back to battles that took place when EVE Online had just hundreds of players. The game’s politics are “as complex and sophisticated as its strategic gameplay,” he said, with all involved parties having clashed before in one way or another, and personal grudges forming amongst their top leaders. “If and how we commemorate this war remains to be seen … We’ll look for the most appropriate way to celebrate our player’s accomplishments.”
Between developer-driven conflicts involving alien invasions and player-driven conflicts building on years of bad blood, it seems there would be no time to participate in COVID-19 research – yet players have clearly put their differences aside and stepped up to the plate. There are “full layers of gamification” to encourage this, according to EVE Online Lead Producer David Ecker, such as chances to earn XP and exclusive rewards to help Capsuleers min/max their time. However, he believes one of the “beautiful things” about Project Discovery is its real-world motivation.
“Every player that participates is a small, yet critical member of the community that is marching towards the same goal for the greater good,” Ecker said. “I truly believe that even without us adding an additional layer, we would still have our community showing up in the name of science and progress.”
EVE Online is available now on PC. Full transcripts of Game Rant’s interviews will be made available soon.
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