A new arcade game is coming to Borderlands 3‘s Sanctuary III and through playing it, not only will you be able to earn points and in-game currency but also help to further real-life scientific research.
Yes, you heard us right, Borderlands 3’s publisher 2K and developer Gearbox Software has just announced the release of Borderlands Science, a new crowdsourced citizen science project that leverages on Borderlands 3’s massive player base to help further actual scientific research.
Through Borderlands Science, players will be helping to map out the gut microbiome which helps to save medical researchers hundreds of thousands of hours in training computers to do the same. In turn, this will help scientists better understand them and provide an important foundation for future microbiome studies on topics ranging from allergies to autism.
The game itself looks very much like a game of Tetris, with players having to connect coloured blocks which represent the DNA of a gut microbe. This helps scientist estimate the similarity between each microbe. With every puzzle that is solved, the more scientists around the world can learn about the human’s gut microbiome.
Special rewards and Vault Hunter skins will be up for grabs to those who play Borderlands Science.
This in-game experience was developed in partnership with researchers and scientists at McGill University, Massively Multiplayer Online Science (MMOS), and The Microsetta Initiative at UC San Diego School of Medicine. Star of The Big Bang Theory and PhD scientist Dr Mayim Bialik lends her voice to the game, helping to guide players along.
“It was a simple choice to join Gearbox and its partners in making Borderlands Science a reality,” said McGill University professor Jerome Waldispuhl. “Working to help align the gaming community with the biomedical field allows these two passionate groups to work together toward a result that we might not realize without the collaborative effort.”
Borderlands 3 recently released its Guns, Love, and Tentacles DLC. It is available on the PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Google Stadia.
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