4.5 million gamers around the world have advanced medical science by helping to reconstruct microbial evolutionary histories using a minigame included inside the critically and commercially successful video game, Borderlands 3. Their playing has led to a significantly refined estimate of the relationships of microbes in the human gut. The results of this collaboration will both substantially advance our knowledge of the microbiome and improve on the AI programs that will be used to carry out this work in future.
I played the hell out of this. I like puzzles and I like helping improve science and shit, so I set a number of new records on the hardest puzzles which felt pretty cool.
My only complaint is that NPCs just talk at you the entire time while you’re inside the mini game, and there’s no good way to prevent it other than turning down the voices in the settings or just muting the game.