Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, 299 W. Campus Drive, Fairchild, Room D243, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
Lab Chip. 2011 Jan 7;11(1):14-22. doi: 10.1039/c0lc00399a. Epub 2010 Nov 18.
Games are a significant and defining part of human culture, and their utility beyond pure entertainment has been demonstrated with so-called 'serious games'. Biotechnology--despite its recent advancements--has had no impact on gaming yet. Here we propose the concept of 'biotic games', i.e., games that operate on biological processes. Utilizing a variety of biological processes we designed and tested a collection of games: 'Enlightenment', 'Ciliaball', 'PAC-mecium', 'Microbash', 'Biotic Pinball', 'POND PONG', 'PolymerRace', and 'The Prisoner's Smellemma'. We found that biotic games exhibit unique features compared to existing game modalities, such as utilizing biological noise, providing a real-life experience rather than virtual reality, and integrating the chemical senses into play. Analogous to video games, biotic games could have significant conceptual and cost-reducing effects on biotechnology and eventually healthcare; enable volunteers to participate in crowd-sourcing to support medical research; and educate society at large to support personal medical decisions and the public discourse on bio-related issues.
游戏是人类文化中重要且具有代表性的一部分，其在娱乐之外的实用性已在所谓的“严肃游戏”中得到证明。生物技术——尽管最近取得了进展——但对游戏领域还没有产生影响。在这里，我们提出了“生物游戏”的概念，即基于生物过程的游戏。我们利用各种生物过程设计并测试了一系列游戏：“Enlightenment”、“Ciliaball”、“PAC-mecium”、“Microbash”、“Biotic Pinball”、“POND PONG”、“PolymerRace”和“The Prisoner's Smellemma”。我们发现，与现有的游戏模式相比，生物游戏具有独特的特点，例如利用生物噪声、提供真实体验而不是虚拟现实，以及将化学感官融入游戏中。类似于电子游戏，生物游戏可能会对生物技术甚至医疗保健产生重大的概念和成本降低效应；使志愿者能够参与众包以支持医学研究；并教育整个社会，以支持个人医疗决策和公众对生物相关问题的讨论。
