Foldit: First Contact is a narrative campaign mode for the citizen science game Foldit. As an online video game about protein folding, Foldit enables citizen scientists around the world to contribute meaningfully to computational biochemistry research. The Foldit: First Contact campaign mode wraps scientific research in a lighthearted science fiction narrative that considers broader social and ethical contexts. The new campaign mode publicly debuted as an experimental feature in the May 2022 update of Foldit (build ID 20220510-28efe43995), and it remained online through August 2022. By cultivating particular themes and meanings at the intersection of gameplay mechanics and a fictive storyworld, Foldit: First Contact encourages players to reflect and deliberate about science, technology, and civic values.
In the style of a comic book, the story of Foldit: First Contact unfolds through a series of cartoon pages woven around the tutorial levels of Foldit. The cartoon narrative reinforces biochemistry concepts while also exploring themes of teamwork, diversity, and responsibility in citizen science. Above all, the story is about self-reflection: learning to recognize the impacts of one’s own actions as a researcher, a gamer, or a member of a high-tech civilization. While the narrative campaign is no longer available to play online, you can download the story in PDF format or watch a playthrough video here: |
Complete playthrough of Foldit: First Contact. Video by Katherine Buse. May 3, 2021. |
Three research papers have been published about this project:
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Colin Milburn, Katherine Buse, Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal, Melissa Wills, Raida Aldosari, Patrick Camarador, Josh Aaron Miller, and Justin Siegel, “Join the Fold: Video Games, Science Fiction, and the Refolding of Citizen Science,” Design Issues 39.1 (2023): 70–87.
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Josh Aaron Miller, Katherine Buse, Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal, Seth Cooper, Justin Siegel, and Colin Milburn, “Wrapped in Story: The Affordances of Narrative for Citizen Science Games” in Foundations of Digital Games 2023 (New York: Association for Computing Machinery, 2023), https://doi.org/10.1145/3582437.3582443.
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Katherine Buse and Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal, “Science Fiction, Simulation, Code: Transmedia and Translation in the Foldit Narrative Project,” in Imagining Transmedia, ed. Ed Finn, Bob Beard, Joey Eschrich, and Ruth Wylie, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2024), pp. 279–308.
Foundations of Digital Games, “Best Paper Watch 2023: Wrapped in Story.” April 8, 2023. | Our “Wrapped in Story” paper won Best Paper Award at the Foundations of Digital Games 2023 conference. |
Josh Aaron Miller presented our research on the affordances of narrative for citizen science games at the Foundations of Digital Games 2023 conference. | Josh Aaron Miller, “FDG 2023: Wrapped in Story.” Video recorded on March 27, 2023, presented at FDG 2023 remote session on April 14, 2023. |
Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal was interviewed about the Foldit: First Contact project on “The Roundtable Perspective” show on Lakeshore PBS in February 2024. | The Roundtable Perspective, “Citizen Science and Gaming – The Roundtable Perspective 714.” February 15, 2024. |
“Alien Theme” – Foldit: First Contact (Composed by Matthew Slayton, 2020). “AMINA Theme” – Foldit: First Contact (Composed by Matthew Slayton, 2020). “Background Theme” – Foldit: First Contact (Composed by Matthew Slayton, 2020). “Splashscreen Theme” – Foldit: First Contact (Composed by Matthew Slayton, 2020). “Loop 1” – Foldit: First Contact (Composed by Matthew Slayton, 2021). “Loop 16” – Foldit: First Contact (Composed by Matthew Slayton, 2021). “Loop 18” – Foldit: First Contact (Composed by Matthew Slayton, 2021). |
Matthew Slayton composed the original soundtrack for Foldit: First Contact. |
CREDITS
Project Leads: Colin Milburn and Justin Siegel
Writers: Katherine Buse, Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal, Melissa Wills, Colin Milburn, Patrick Camarador, and Justin Siegel
Programmers: Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal, Josh Aaron Miller, and Seth Cooper
Graphic Artists: Raida Aldosari, Katherine Buse, and Colin Milburn
Composer: Matthew Slayton
Foldit: First Contact © 2022 is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Research for Foldit: First Contact was supported by the National Science Foundation (grants #1629879 and #1627539), Northeastern University, University of Chicago, University of Notre Dame, and University of California, Davis.
Thanks to Scott Horowitz, Firas Khatib, Brian Koepnick, Rocco Moretti, Amy Sterling, Augustine Arredondo, Peishan Huang, Ashley Han, Maryna Imas, Tiffany Yue Zhang, and all the members of the Foldit team for their help and advice during development of the Foldit: First Contact project.
Foldit is developed by a collaboration of University of Washington, Northeastern University, Vanderbilt University, University of California, Davis, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, and University of Denver.
Foldit Game Concept and Design: Seth Cooper, Adrien Treuille, Janos Barbero, Zoran Popović, David Baker, and David Salesin
Foldit Principal Investigators: Zoran Popović, David Baker, Firas Khatib, Seth Cooper, Jens Meiler, and Scott Horowitz