How would you gamify SETI?

You want your players to do three things: Explore, Share, and Label.

Explore: Players comb through your data sets (a 'space explorer' motif would make this a little more engaging; maybe have them pilot a little spaceship sprite, using the data set as an underlying map). When they find something they identify as a pattern, they can tag it. So you bind together a location on the data set and their name for it.

Share: Players can then share their tagged patterns with their friends (a twitter, livejournal, facebook tie-in here would be excellent), inviting them to come see the pattern that they found in SETI's data set. Over time and many iterations, you start building a sort of human topography over the data set. You're letting the players populate the data with human-significant markers.

Label: Lastly, as the same points in the data set start to get multiple tags, visitors can vote for who has given it the best name. This gives visitors to the pattern (and new players who have been invited into the game to see the pattern) something immediate to do.

Player Achievements: You could then have an achievements layer in which players can see how many patterns they've found, which ones sport their names, and also who has the biggest "fleet" of players they've invited and that sort of thing. This is an important layer for the player experience, but it's irrelevant to the process of tagging the data…

SETI Data Mining: Because SETI just needs to keep tabs on which points in the data set are the most popular, which are being visited the most often, and which are getting the most votes for their naming competitions. SETI can look in on these "hot spots" and see if there's anything of interest.

Monetizing: Players can earn some 'space bucks' or similar currency at a slow rate through simple participation, and can get more space bucks through donations (which could also come with real-world promotional materials like stickers or baseball caps — and to reverse that, promotional materials acquired elsewhere for donations can come with login information and a code for starting 'space bucks,' thereby getting you more players). Space bucks can be spent on additional votes for naming things, for customizing the look of the sprite spaceship you explore the data set with, and for advertising your pattern on the front page of the SETI game so other players might come visit your pattern.

SETI's end goal is the crowd sourced verification of data. Let's first examine the data that would be useful to SETI, and use that to develop the game mechanics that would cause players to produce that data.

1) Verification of signals that were found by SETIs algorithms. This will help confirm that the algorithms are accurately providing results.

2) Finding false positives in SETIs algorithms. If the system found something that isn't actual there, this will help correct that.

3) More precise location of found signals. Users could provide location data of the signal to help train the algorithms to more precisely locate the signals position, not just detect their existence.

4) Discovery of signals that were missed. Perhaps the most exciting to the user and to SETI would be discovering something new that had been overlooked.

SETIs current application addresses points 1,2, and 4. If we break the gameplay down to only address one point at a time, our gameplay becomes clearer and more succinct. For example, the current application asks, "what do you see?" Translated into a game, that might be the equivalent of "I Spy" in a car ride. Let's instead, make it more like a hidden picture search. Several images can be shown to the user at the same time, each with a verified signal in them. This will provide more stimulation to the user by increasing the complexity of the problem. With only showing one signal, the user may get bored, unless the signal is very difficult to find like a Where's Waldo game. If Waldo was standing in the middle of a field with nothing around him, the book series would probably not have been as popular. The user must then find the verified signals. Doing so results in leveling up points. This clear gameplay only addresses point 1, continued verification of signals. By allowing the user to click or circle the found signal with the mouse, we also address point 3.

Once the user has leveled up by finding already verified signals, he can graduate to "Explorer", where some or all of the images given will not have been verified. The user has become a trusted source for data mining. For every signal image the user discovers that had never before been seen, but is subsequently verified by others, the user should be granted not only leveling up points, but some kind of virtual trophy or badge and the ability to share the image on his social networks (Facebook and Twitter). Here we address point 4, and of course by having the user indicate the position and shape of the signal, we also address point 3 again. Anything that wasn't marked could address point 2 as well. The user determined that no signal was present, and that's as valuable for algorithm training as knowing that a signal was present.

In addition, the user could trade some of his experience points to either name the signal or have it attributed to him. Low on experience points? No problem, play more, or buy 1000 points for $4.99. The user gets a little bit of fame and monetization of discovered signals becomes possible.

Earning a social network share of something the user discovered themselves, requires dedication and time, like becoming the mayor of your favorite establishment on FourSquare. The Facebook feed post could be designed so that friends are invited to try and beat the number of signals that the user has discovered.

Another mini-game that would also address continued verification of data would be a match similar images game. Several images could be displayed, two of each type of signal. The user would then select which two signals are most similar, and when correct, the images would remove themselves from the game board.

While these games are simple and taken from the Highlights for Children playbook, it's important to remember a couple things. One, adults like these sorts of games. One of the most popular video bar games is a Picture Search, where the player must identify what's different between two photographs. Two, kids should not be overlooked as valuable crowd sourced data miners. While they might not have Facebook accounts, they do have a science class that would be more than happy to let them search for signals 30 minutes a week.

As a side note, I'd be interested to see other ways of representing the data. For example, these SETI images could be sonified by being converted to spectrograms. That way, the signals could be played as audio. Not only would this be an interesting alternative interpretation of the data, it would also allow the visually impaired to participate as well.

I think this sort of thing would benefit from going along the lines of a social game because

1. It is going for the mass market
2. The experience is predominantly casual
3. You need the users to keep coming back and engaging in the product in some meaningful way

Social Mechanics I think could apply:

• achievements (maybe based on speed or number of images looked through or number of people invited)
• feed posts on achievements
• leveling system
• friend lists
• some way to measure social clout (maybe rank number of images looked through vs your friends)

There are already some games which gamedesign is similar to the Waterfall plot Using a game like Tetris or MrGiggle you can easily transfer the vertical time line from the waterfall plot on the vertical time line of the Game. Our next approach is transferring the horizontal frequency line on a color-scheme. So you can display every frequency that's received by the SETI program on the colored stones of the games.

Now by finding connected stones or to use a colored stone to fill the gap between two seperated line with the same color (like it would be if there is a potential RFI) the player could automatically find some patterns that wasn't detected by the SETI software.

So by playing a game a user is processing data and is participating in the search for cosmic company and to help SETI become financially sustainable so it can live long and prosper.

More detailed information at http://romrack.wordpress.com/2011/05/06/quest-how-would-you-gamify-seti-braincue-has-a-cue/

Each player is responsible for monitoring one "station" (i.e. data stream) - this can be represented visually by, for example, a radio telescope or mainframe with blinkenlights. This visualization is used both on the player's desktop seti@home client and on the web interface. A player and their station's info can be surfaced using widgets, which are easily deployed to Facebook (or any other Web site).

At the outset, a player's station operates at low power, granting them access to a lower (weekly?) number of data chunks to process. As one's station processes more data, more power is granted, boosting that player's ranking and allowing more data to flow to her station. The desktop client can correct for the machine's processing power, uptime, etc in order to avoid penalizing workstations in favor of, for example, university servers.

A player with high power and status may grant points to a player lower down, up to some (monthly?) limit. This creates a connection between the two players, which is not only reflected as a social network relationship, but also results in processing jobs to be paralellized between the two. In other words, helping someone gain status actually results in a more even distribution of the processing load. In this way, accumulating AND relinquishing some status/power is incentivized.

A group of connected players, if it grows to sufficient size and productivity, is given special mention and status on Facebook, can use its own team widget anywhere, and also gets a group discount on SETI schwag or other related goodies.

SetiExplore (Just a codename I am using)

What am I?

SetiExplore is a social/community driven explorer based browser/mobile app game where the player can explore planets and survey their surfaces for artifacts (data).

What can I do?

SetiExplore would start off allowing users to sign up and jump into the game quickly. Maybe earning an "On Board" badge for entering their ships deck. This deck could just be a simple graphic with the "view port" being the actual play surface. The player could be taken through a small tutorial on how to explore the universe. This could entail possibly clicking a region or possibly even given a random region that they warp to.

In a region, a player would be presented with planets. Some may have been discovered by players and others may not. Possibly give the player a badge for discovering new planets. A player can then click on the planet and be taken to a planetary surface. This will display a planets surface with various "Artifacts" over it (The Visible Data). The player can then click on the artifact and attempt to "Identify" it with a number of patterns (Much like they give in galaxy zoo). The player would then automatically be given a "First Contact" badge or something similar for identifying the artifact.

The player can then complete surveying the planet and identify each piece of data. Maybe even gaining a badge if the player matched identification of an artifact with that of other players (50+ players identified the item the same). This badge could be called "Collective Consciousness" or something of that nature. Once a planet is surveyed, They would earn another badge for completing. Same thing could be done for a region. Maybe players could leave "Logs" on each planet or each artifact for others to view after they identify the artifact (I say after so that a players comment/log doesn't affect the choice).

How does a player progress/accomplish things?

As a player, you would be working to level up, gain badges, gain titles, gain status (prestige ladder?) For leveling up, a player would gain experience for each artifact, planet, and region they surveyed. This would give the player level ups. Also experience could be given for badges as well. Certain levels are given badges as well.

Gaining badges would be through accumulation of similar identification, number of surveys, logins, leaving logs, helping the community, etc. Also you gain badges for leveling up, for finding really important information (maybe flagged by you guys).

Titles would be attached to level ups and to badges alike. Possibly even special titles given out by the SETI game team for exceptional players. Think of player xcom being given the title of xcom the pioneer or xcom the star bouncer.

Status could be given to players that have very exceptional play. Maybe players who have played for six months, given a bunch of help to the community, etc could be admirals or star wardens. Simple status symbols would give players something to look forward to and other something to show off their dedication.

Certain statuses and titles could be purchased through trading depots or outposts. This would just be a simple link (image link) that would take them to a simple depot like screen that would show them what they could purchase with credits. These credits are purchased from real money from a credit conversion console.

How can this choice be cost effective?

As this is a browser based game, all graphics can be static and 2d if need be. Maybe adding jquery for effects that can make the game more fun (Mouse hover over a planet makes it pulse). Data would be easily managed this way as data can be pulled from the database and each item could be assigned to a region, planet, etc. an example is data_000002 or something similar (this is an example) could be put into the database with a column of region, planet, etc.

Also planetary graphics could be limited if need be. Maybe 50 planet graphics could be made and their sizes could make up for variance. 50 surface graphics could be done as well. The regions could be simple starry, nebulous, etc backdrop images. Artifacts could have a limited number of graphics as well. Maybe have a few rare, uncommon, etc graphics that could keep the game fresh as well and keep players searching for new and exciting data.

By doing it this way, you are making the game fun, using less resources, making the game even more compatible for mobile development, and keeping it simple.

This is just a small footnote on what could be possible but this is what I would find addictive ;)

At first blush, this idea is similar if not the same as the one proposed by joshroby. However after inspection, hopefully you'll appreciate the difference.

My idea is inspired by gold prospecting by in the day. Also, I frequent the setiquest message boards. I hope my idea produces a game that would be fun, but also result in useful information for SETI.

Game objective: Acquire most wealth. There are number of ways to do this task. 1. Become a plot owner. 2. Become a plot evaluator. 3. Become a plot analysis expert

The basic unit in the game is a space plot. A space plot is the two dimensional image referred to as a waterfall plot on setiQuest. One axis is time and the other is frequency. The plots will be a standard size NxN image. There obviously a locality relationship between plots. Each plot is initialize not analysized. However, some statistics can be given about the image such as mean, variance, etc...

The player can purchase plots. Since the amount of data collected by setiQuest is going to be enormous, then it should be relatively cheap to buy. Also, players can sell their plots to other players. This would have a real estate aspect in that some plots will be worth more than others. Being analyzed creates value.

Basic analysis would be to classify the plot. This is done by using the setiQuest explorer seen in setiQuest explorer (bottom of page). This task is a valuable operation. Suppose it cost X credits to purchase a plot, then doing this classification yields the owner Y credits, where Y>X. This will cause plot owners to "invest" in more land. Having the plot classify will also generate some incremental wealth each hour or day or some other time unit.

The utility of this classification task to setiQuest is large. Basically the game players would be creating a large training set for setiQuest. They could train a pattern recognition classifier on these training instance. This means that the classification done by the game players must be "good". To insure "goodness", we will allow other players to also classify a plot owned by another player.

Other players can classify a plot owned by another player. This would reward the player with Z credits, Z<Y. Maybe Z is a decaying function of the number of votes casted on the plot. It is better to be the second person to classify the plot versus the 100^th. However Z should be greater than 0. This will allow a person to ALWAYS be able to generate wealth. There needs to be an aspect of correctness to the value of Z as well. If there is an "expert" that classifies the plot as A, then players that also make the same classification would receive more than those who do not.

Basic play (anybody can enjoy): At this point, we can state the basic play for the average player. A player starts with enough credits to purchase one unexplored space plot. A player purchases and classifies plots. A player can also classify other plots.

There should be a way that plot owners can incorporate to expand their territory. Plot owners should be able to hire services like advanced analysis.

Advanced play (will require more knowledge):

A player can become a plot evaluator: This player can look at space plots to determine their worth. There would be a fee less than the cost to purchase the plot in order to evaluate. This player can then purchase the plot or create a service to sell their information to other potential plot purchasers.

A player can become a plot analysis expert: This would require a player to understand some of the signal processing need for signal analysis. Basically, this type of player would offer the service of analyzing a plot for an owner. This player collects a fee. The result of the analysis can increase the worth of the plot for the owner.

There are definitely some aspects of this idea that needs improved. But I think this idea would appeal to both the casual player and one that also has some scientific background. Either way it would provide useful results to SETI to augment their algorithms. As I mentioned, this idea has some similarities with one proposed by joshroby. I think concepts from both would yield an even better idea.

I'd like to point out two observations to factor into the game idea.

The first observation is that there is already a large community of people who enjoy capturing, analyzing, and discovering facts (who originated it, what it means, where it came from, etc) about radio signals. This community is above average in technical knowledge and has boundless enthusiasm for this kind if work er, play. The community I am speaking of are the radio listeners that go after short-wave stations, scan their neighborhoods police and fire departments, track down navigation beacons, or even build equipment to hear natural radio phenomena, such as whistlers and warblers. This is not just the radio amateur "hams" (though it does include them), rather there is a wider group that is already doing what SETI needs done just for fun. See publications such as Monitoring Times or Popular Communications to see who these people are and what interests them.

I believe the SETI game should reach out to this community, perhaps even more so than the general public. Rather than dumb down SETI for masses of casual gamers, we should strive to recruit more talented and motivated gamers.

The second observation is that the fact remains that the odds against actually identifying an alien signal are very high. Promising that possibility to the players sounds a lot like saying they may win the lottery. The payoff is huge, but the odds of winning are infinitesimal, not to mention there can only be one "prize".

For that reason, I think the SETI game should concentrate on a more immediately rewarding aspect of the SETI search, specifically, on weeding out the false positives. Identifying or even locating the source of a lot of the mystery signals is a challenge that is within the grasp of the active radio listening community and they will likely be thrilled for the opportunity. There is a good chance they will also contribute to the development of analytical tools to help in the effort.

If mystery signals can be identified by the gamers, which would include members of the radio listening community, the workload of the SETI researchers is greatly reduced.
Gamers can be rewarded for the results of their efforts by means already discussed here such as rankings, merit badges, virtual currency etc., not to mention the knowledge that they are participating in a great scientific endeavor.

The rewards are challenging, yet within the grasp of this talented technical radio-listening community.

Finding new patterns and outsource computingpower

This is my basic idea. I would assume many gamification elements could apply to this idea, however don’t make it too complex simplicity rulez.

Everyone can design patterns. This could be a letter, number, logo, picture or basically anything. If it’s not black and white just convert it. If these patterns really exist in space, that would be cool. “A 99% match of a Google logo found 6million lightyears away.” That’s an example of a news headline. It would make the service more popular.

It doesn't have to be a 99% match for the purpose of this game. It could be 80% it just has to make sense that’s all.

However in order to claim your pattern you have to support the system by giving away some cpu power. It will be used for scientific algorithms and some of it will be used for user generated patterns. You can only claim your patterns in real-time. A pop-up will show-up “Pattern found”.

The complexity of the pattern will define the number of points. Patterns can be bought and sold. Stock market dynamic. 8) A pattern could be claimed in two ways (black and white) White = Pattern Black = Anti-pattern

Players can add a widget with their pattern to their blog, twitterpage, website or facebookpage. With a phrase: “Scanning for galactic presence...powered by SETI.”

This is adding fun and epic meaning to a very ambitious project!

Using signal patterns as properties/characteristics/abilities for a simple competitive online card game (e.g. Magic/Pokemon) in which players use patterns as 'cards' with various properties. Using the complexity of the signal pattern and various pattern types being more successful against other pattern types (diagonal/pulse etc = complex version of rock/scissor/paper). Patterns achieve points when successful and can be traded between online players, players build up 'decks' of patterns for use in competitions. New players need to find effective pattern sets from the raw data pool provided by SETI in order to build up a competitive set to trade up or continue to search for good pasterns in the raw data pool (instead of buying card packs).