EVE Online Players Against COVID-19
CCP Games boasted the results of the third edition of Project Discovery in EVE Online. As part of it, players performed 47 million coronavirus-related tasks, thus helping scientists in their research on COVID-19.
After a relatively mild summer stage of the pandemic, the coronavirus attacked with double the force, as evidenced by statistics from recent weeks. This resulted in further restrictions imposed by states, going as far as forced stay at home. However, this has increased interest in video games (see the huge success of Pokemon GO), which scientists decided to use in the fight against COVID-19. The latest example of this is the initiative of CCP Games. The studio has revealed that around 171,000 EVE Online players have already completed more than 47 million tasks to help research the coronavirus, equivalent to 36 years of professional work. BBC talked to the developer, gamers and scientists from the University of British Columbia.
The task in question is available as part of the third phase of Project Discovery from June 2020. The players take part in a simple mini-game, which consists of drawing groups of cells (presented according to data collected by flow cytometry). The data collected in this way are used by scientists in studies to explain the impact of coronavirus on the human immune system. In total, the devs of EVE Online included about 707 thousand unique tasks.
This is not the first such initiative. In March, the devs of the educational game Foldit added a new task (and then a few more), which is to neutralize the pointed "crown", to which the virus owes its name, and used to bind it to human proteins. However, we don't know how many people have taken up this challenge, considering that it required them to download a separate (though free) game. EVE Online also offers free fun (though with some limitations), and there's no need to convince anyone about the enthusiasm of the community focused around the work of CCP Games. Enough to mention the numerous reports of huge battles and other unusual activities of players. No wonder that many of them decided to make their own contribution to the fight against COVID-19.
Of course, the popularity of this and other initiatives does not mean that we will suddenly get the perfect solution to the pandemic. However, taking into account the worsening statistics and the growing influence of the coronavirus (also on the gaming and film industries), every action that can even minimally help in the fight against COVID-19 is of great importance.
