Play the Games From #GamifyYourPhD

The teams in action at Gamify Your PhD

They are all online now (and free and great) so no excuse for not getting the high score!

Thomas Forth, ‘The Researcher’

 “I saw the advert for ‘Gamify your PhD’ at wired.co.uk, via a long chain of fellow scientists on twitter, just six days before the deadline. I immediately knew that this was the chance I needed to develop some new ideas. I wanted to see if the computational technique I’ve worked hard to make visual could take the next step and become interactive.

“The games designers we worked with during the hack are masters of creating intuitive ways of interacting with complex systems. In minutes they could come up with solutions to problems I hadn’t even thought of.  The final game needs some small improvements, but I’m already thrilled with what we’ve achieved. Ours was an extremely ambitious project and a lot of what we tried didn’t work. The Wellcome Trust deserves huge credit for letting us learn from our mistakes to create something better than I had ever hoped for.

“Progress in science often comes from using our understanding of existing systems to come up with new ideas. In the 21st century we are studying systems more complex than ever and we have fantastic new tools and techniques. But we are often held back by the cost, in time and training, of innovating. The solution is to look at problems differently and play with different solutions. We should work more with the gaming experts who have mastered that art.”

Front screen of Monsieur Baguette – click to see more!