Video gamers are experts at pattern recognition, we can spot one pixel out in a thousand. While shooting and jumping. As it turns out, diagnosing malaria is also a game of pattern recognition, and one which takes considerable time for doctors. Now, doctors are starting to see results from a game that uses crowd-sourcing from gamers to detect malaria in blood samples. The results are impressive. The Atlantic has the story.
The article also talks about Foldit, another crowd-sourced game where players help scientists solve protein folding problems. How powerful are harnessed gamers? They solved a folding problem that had stumped scientists for ten years, and they broke it in three weeks.
The thought just hit me. I have to wonder if professional gaming in the future won’t be all Starcraft and raid running and League of Legends, but instead revolve around using games to solve real-world problems. There’s a lot of money to be made in say, genetics, and if gamers can use their powers to solve those problems, shouldn’t they see some of that money?