Players control real microorgansims in 'biotic video games'


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A common criticism of single-player video games is that they isolate their 
players, shutting them off from anything or anyone that exists in the real 
world. Well, that certainly can’t be said of the lab-based “biotic games”
 created by Stanford University physicist Ingmar Riedel-Kruse – while they 
may be fashioned afterarcade classics, his games require players to manipulate
 living microorganisms in real time. If you want to “kick” a soccer ball into a 
net, for instance, you have to get an actual paramecium to do it for you.



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The gaming hardware is based around a small fluid chamber containing 
paramecia, with a video microscope attached to it. The feed from the camera is 
sent to a computer, where it is superimposed over the various game grids.
 A microprocessor tracks the movements of the paramecia, and keeps score 
as they unknowingly move through the grid with which their images are being
 combined.

Using a home gaming system-like controller, players attempt to influence the movement of the microorganisms by doing things such as varying the polarity of a mild electrical field that is being applied to the chamber, or releasing whiffs of chemicals from one side or the other.



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Besides the soccer-like Ciliball game, other titles include the Pac Man-esque 
PAC-mecium, along with Biotic Pinball and POND PONG. While all of those games 
involve the manipulation of single-celled creatures, Riedel-Kruse’s other biotic 
games fall into two more categories: those that involve biological processes on a molecular level, and those that involve whole colonies of cells.

"We are talking about microbiology with these games, very primitive life forms. 
 We do not use any higher-level organisms," said the Stanford physicist. 
"Since multiple test players raised the question of exactly where one should 
draw this line, these games could be a good tool to stimulate discussions in 
schools on bioethical issues."

Besides getting players to ponder philosophical quandaries, the games are 
also intended simply to get people interested in microbiology, and down the line 
could be used for crowd-sourcing – obtaining scientific data through the input 
of laypeople. If so, they wouldn’t be the first games to do so. TheUniversity of Washington recently launched the internet-based Foldit game, in an effort to 
gather strategies for folding proteins, while Stanford and Carnegie-Mellon
 University’s EteRNA gets players to create new molecular structures for 
ribonucleic acids.


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