Is Virtual Citizen Science A Game?

The use of game elements within virtual citizen science is increasingly common, promising to bring increased user activity, motivation, and engagement to large-scale scientific projects. However, there is an ongoing debate about whether or not gamifying systems such as these is actually an effective means by which to increase motivation and engagement in the long term. While gamification itself is receiving a large amount of attention, there has been little beyond individual studies to assess its suitability or success for citizen science; similarly, while frameworks exist for assessing citizen science performance, they tend to lack any appreciation of the effects that game elements might have had. We therefore review the literature to determine what the trends are regarding the performance of particular game elements or characteristics in citizen science, and survey existing projects to assess how popular different game features are. Investigating this phenomenon further, we then present the results of a series of interviews carried out with the EyeWire citizen science project team to understand more about how gamification elements are introduced, monitored, and assessed in a live project. Our findings suggest that projects use a range of game elements with points and leaderboards the most popular, particularly in projects that describe themselves as “games.” Currently, gamification appears to be effective in citizen science for maintaining engagement with existing communities, but shows limited impact for attracting new players.