foldit - social gamification - manu melwin joy

FOLDITSocial Gamification

Prepared By Manu Melwin Joy

Assistant ProfessorSCMS School of Technology and Management

Kerala, India.Phone – 9744551114

Mail – manu_melwinjoy@yahoo.com

Kindly restrict the use of slides for personal purpose. Please seek permission to reproduce the same in public forms and presentations.

AIDS• By 2009, AIDs has already

killed 30 Million people, or

close to the equivalent of

the State of California. As of

2010, there are still 34

Million people that have

contracted HIV.

AIDS• For 15 years, many of the top

PhD Scientists in the world

were trying to decipher a

crystal structure for one of the

AIDS-causing viruses called the

Mason-Pfizer monkey virus (M-

PMV), but could not solve it.

FOLDIT• Luckily, the University of

Washington’s Center for

Game Science collaborated

with the Biochemistry

department and created

FoldIt, an online puzzle video

game about protein folding.

FOLDIT• Foldit utilizes a game-like

puzzle interface that allows

people from all over the

world to “play” and compete

in figuring out various

protein structures that fit a

researcher’s criteria.

FOLDIT• To everyone’s surprised, with over

240,000 “players” registering for

the game and competing viciously

against each other, a solution to

the structure of the M-PMV was

found in 10 days, creating a major

breakthrough in the AIDS

research field.