Gamers are a notoriously petulant and fickle crowd. There was uproar when the final part of the Mass Effect trilogy was released with what was perceived as a weak ending. Never mind that for countless hours, the three games had kept people entertained. The ending wasn't as good as players wanted, and they all started bitching about it.
As a result of this kind of thing, game players can often come off an entitled dickheads. It's difficult, then, to complain about "Play To Cure: Genes In Space", a smartphone game which aims to help cancer research by crowd-sourcing data. Rest assured, however, that complain I will.
For a few years now, science has been farming out difficult number-crunching to the public. The Playstation 3 had a "Folding At Home" app which you could leave running in the background, where your PS3's un-used computing power worked on complicated protein-folding simulations that would have taken years with conventional computers. The idea was that if a million people were using "Folding At Home," the vast amounts of data were being processed through a million computers instead of one, with the eventual results collated by researchers.
This was a nice idea and I tried to use Folding At Home as much as possible, just to feel like I was doing something positive. In the same vein (or possibly in the same amino acid) I downloaded "Play To Cure" because I was aware it was helping cancer research and because I like games.
Sadly, it's a shitty game.
The premise sees the player as a space pilot collecting valuable ore by flying through a series of hoops. Before missions, players are required to look at a map and decide where the hoops should be to accrue maximum ore. This is clearly the actual research data needed, but sadly, most of the maps will see players flying in an almost perfectly straight line. Even the more convoluted maps don't particularly tax the player; you just have to turn your smartphone slightly and then head towards the next hoop.
Obstacles are provided in the form of incoming asteroids, which you have to shoot with underwhelming lasers. The whole thing is incredibly pedestrian which, for those unaware, is the exact antonym to space flight.
This route-map is way more complicated than the ones I've seen. Although it's entirely possible I'm shit at curing cancer.
I really don't mean to be hard-hearted by criticising a game made with the best possible intentions, but with the game being so dull the whole endeavour rapidly takes on an "eat your vegetables" quality. I'll play it because I'm in favour of helping cancer research, but there are plenty of other mobile games with no social value that are way more fun.
In a way I find it slightly patronising. If someone released an app that just asked me to put my phone down for five minutes and not use it while it did some calculations on the genetic anomalies that cause tumours I'd be all for it. But don't try to lure me in by pretending I'll get to do something fun, especially when it's not much fun at all.
If anything, just give me screen after screen of the maps - which, again, are a visual representation of DNA and are what the researchers are actually interested in. I'd be more than happy to do a few of those when I had a spare five minutes, just to balance out my karma a little. Besides, I smoke, I drink heavily and I eat a poor diet. Curing cancer is something I have a vested interest in from the get-go.
Maybe it's just me; maybe other people aren't nerdy enough and have to have their pills sugared with a mediocre space-shooter. But honestly, I can't be fucked flying any more dreary missions. All they're telling the scientists behind the programme is that I'm not very good at shooting asteroids, which I could have told them via e-mail or text questionnaire if they'd just asked me.
Someone should release a far simpler game for this kind of research - one that is less deliberately camouflaged as something else - and they might be surprised by how many people are willing to help.
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