a world without (new) drugs – play it before you live it
TRANSCRIPT
A World Without (New) Drugs –
Play It Before You Live It?Jonas Boström (Feb 2014)
”Is work such a poorly defned game that you need to pay people to play it?”
Gamification is…
A famous example – Nike+ When designed correctly, gamifcaton has proven to be successful in engaging people to change behaviors, develop skills and solve problems, in many different areas.
Nike+ has turned ftness into a game, designed to solve motvatonal issues when it comes to running, and has now >18 million members worldwide.
A less famous example – “Zombies, run! 2”
“Players act as an Avatar ("Runner 5“) through a series of missions, during which they run and listen to various audio narratons to uncover the story. While running, the player collects supplies such as ammuniton, medicine and bateries, which can be used to build and expand their base. The app can record the distance, tme, pace, and calories burned on each mission through the use of the phone's GPS or accelerometer. When using the GPS feature, the user can also opt to partcipate in a zombie chase which requires the player to run faster for a short period of tme or be caught by zombies and lose their supplies, or even fail the mission. “
Who am I to…
• recently read “Reality is Broken”
• took a KTH course in game programming (PyGame)
• took a MOOC course in “Gamification”.
• think it is great fun
•…and I have two kids…• (both learning math while playing)
What's the fuzz? Gamification currently peaking on Gartner's Hype Cycle for (2013) Emerging Technologies
Who is Gamifying?
Kevin Werbach MOOC
Arguments against gamificationThe power of gaming is not yet fully understood, and gamers are sometimes seen as “wasting their time” or not “living in real life”.
and it can be misuse to get people to things that they don't want to do.
Attention Problems…? Wot?Not my kids...and anyone with a ten year old can atest that kids spend a lot of tme
spellbound, focused on the task at hand
Lack of atenton – a poorly defned task?
Why Gaming – rewards
Playing games can be seen as a happiness engine (if voluntary)
• Providing constant rewards at difficulty levels we just can master, whichis unlike real life, where things often are too easy or too difficult
We are evolutonary designed for “small” rewards.
Find food, get sleep, etc, etc
Studies reveal that we are happier with constant rewards than winning a million on the lotery once.
It's fun!
What things are fun
Kevin Werbach MOOC
Computers and video games have come a long way since
and so have those who play them. Todays games are enjoyed by players all ages and backgrounds.
http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/esa_ef_2013.pdf
Essential Facts…“No other sector has experienced the same explosive growth as the computer and video game industry.”
The ten-thousand-hours of practise theory
According to the iconic game-designer Jane McGonigal, the average young American has spent more than ten-thousand hours playing video or computer games by the age of 21. This corresponds to the tme spent in elementary school (1th to the 9th grade) teached all other subjects in Sweden…
…the conclusion is that these youngsters will not just be good gamers, they will be exceptonally good gamers. Hence, we will soon have an entre generaton possessing outstanding technical skills at the same thing – gaming.
What a human resource! Not to be confused with human resources management...
The Cambridge Handbook of Expertse and Expert Performance, K. Anders Ericsson
Gamers exceptionally skilled – at what?
McGonigal's reveals that gamers are exceptonally skilled at one thing – collaboraton.
Collaboraton described as the collectve effort of achieving a joint goal and/or joining forces.
It's about creatng something that would not be possible to do alone.
Sounds a lot like a drug discovery project?! (as well as many other types of projects of course)
Crowdsourcing – Wikipedia “If you take Wikipedia as a kind of a unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project – every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in – that represents something like the accumulaton of 100 million hours of human thought...It's a back-of-the-envelope calculaton, but it's the right order of magnitude, about 100 million hours of thought” –Shirky and Watenberg
No trivial effort – take 1 million people and convince them to spend a hundred hours each,or take 10 000 people fve full-tme years for free...for no extrinsic reward
But…there are 1.7 billion internet users and 24 hours a day...hypothetcally 100 wikipedia projects could be pulled off every single day....why are there not more?
Very, very difficult to achieve the necessary critcal mass – spread to thin – too many demands
But there's hope – Wikipedia is a good multplayer game. For example, player acton has direct and clear results, edits appear instantly giving users a powerful sense of control. There are also experience points (edit counts), etc
How to crowdsource MP’s expenses? In 2009 more than 20000 Britons joined forces online to investgate one of the biggest scandals in Britsh parliament history by playing a game.
According to leaked documents, hundred of members of parliament (MP’s) regularly fled illegal expense claims, charging tax payers up to tens of thousands pounds.
For example, Sir Peter Viggers claimed £32 000 for personal gardening expenses, including £1 645 pounds for a “floatng duck island”...?
The public was outraged, and demanded full accountng. Government released all documents, but in a unhelpful format, an unsorted collecton of more than a million expenses forms and receipts as scanned images.
Editors at the Guardian knew they needed all the crowd help it could get, and decided to tap the wisdoms of the crowd with a game.
The Guardian set up a web-site for this (one person, a one week job)
How to crowdsource MP’s expenses? 3 days into the game – more than 2000 players had analyzed 170 000 electronic documents. Why the success? Rewarding partcipants the right way: emotonal rewards of a good game.
Also using classic game rewards – having a clear sense of purpose, making obvious impact, making contnuous progress, enjoying a chance of success, and experiencing plenty of fero moments. The game featured all of these emotonal rewards, in masses.
Easy to take acton and see you impact right away.
• A real-tme actvity feed showed the names of players logged in, and their actons, made the site feel social, sharing the same experience.
• A series of top contributor lists long-term and short-term to motvate both behaviors.
• “best individual discovery” page for key fndings from individual players
• Key results...on average each MP expensed twice his/hers salary...a culture of extravagant reimbursement than originally suspected
• At least 28 MP's resigned, and criminal proceedings against 4. Hundreds of MP's were ordered to repay a total of 1.12 million pounds
The crowd of gamers did this important work faster than any organisation could do...for free!
Cool examples
Programming examples
https://scratch.mit.edu/
https://code.org/
Linkedin “game” to get people to complete profile
Examples within medicine?
Helping patents taking their pills in tme
Video game to sharpen up elderly brains
Pfzer video game in clinical trial for Alzheimer’s disease
AZ sales example
Examples within drug discovery?
Foldit is an online puzzle video game about protein folding. The objectve of the game is to fold the structure of selected proteins as well as possible. The highest scoring solutons are analysed by researchers, who determine whether or not there is a natve structural confguraton (or natve state) that can be applied to the relevant proteins, in the "real world".
When playing EteRNA, one can interact with thousands of other players with the goal to improve computer models predictng RNA folding.
A Facebook game about drug discovery (BI). It did not engage me (not realistc, not user-friendly and not collaboratve)
One(!) example within medicinal chemistry?
A computer game very much like today's compound library enumeraton tools, combined with a predicton. Not too different to my day-to-day work.
Computer-aided drug design is similar to (serious) gaming – it fulflls many of the criteria required. One can certainly leverage on game techniques even further.
The software does not all have to run on iPads or the new PS4, and include badges and leaderboards, but to reach the next level they need to be much more collaboratve and intuitve.
Copy more, copy better!
htp://www.pharma-iq.com/columnists/on-drug-design/
Inspired byJane McGonigal, Reality is Broken
Kevin Werbach, MOOC Gamifcaton
Jordan Shapiro, Twiter, Forbes