Side Quest 3: SynBio Game Jam
RSVP to explore synthetic biology through games.
Welcome to The Gameful Scientist! This newsletter explores the intersection of bio and gaming. Enjoy!
Synthetic biology, or synbio, combines biology, engineering, and computer science to design and create custom organisms for useful purposes. It's changing how we grow food, source materials, and develop new medicines. I believe that games, with their interactive nature, are the best medium for exploration and storytelling. That's why I'm excited to launch the SynBio Game Jam – to connect these fields and see what people create.
A game jam is like a hackathon, but instead of creating software or apps, participants are challenged to build a video game from scratch.
As the event approaches, some participants might need inspiration for what they can create during a week-long game jam. In this article, we'll explore 6 ideas. We'll discuss video game music, autonomous agents, paper-to-games, biotic game interfaces, CYOA games, and sandbox games. Consider this event your playground – join a team, have fun, and bring your most ambitious ideas to life.
Enter Side Quest 3.
Idea #1: Video Game Music
I want some sound designers to come to the event, so I’ll start with this one.
Sound and music are crucial for video games, immersing players and stirring emotions. Synbio offers a unique way for composers to create audio assets or sweeping scores by turning DNA sequences and biological events into music.
The idea of turning biological data into sound started in the early ‘80s. Researchers like David Deamer and Joël Sternheimer developed ways to change DNA bases and amino acids' vibration frequencies into musical notes. This is called sonification.
Here’s how coronavirus sounds:
Pretty cool eh? Maybe it doesn’t quite sound like a Vincent Diamante piece, but composers can get creative by mapping DNA letters to musical notes.
Here are some ideas to explore at the game jam:
DNA sequence melodies: Turn DNA sequences into musical notes and make melodies from these patterns. Assign each DNA base (A, C, T, G) to a musical note and create chords based on base pairs and triplets to produce unique harmonies and progressions.
Layer traditional sounds: Enhance raw DNA sequence sounds by adding traditional instruments and effects. This approach combines science and creativity, making a blend of organic and synthetic sounds.
Personalized melodies from genetics: Create custom music for players based on their genetic data.
Other biological phenomena: Investigate turning other biological events, like sounds made by stressed plants, into music. You can capture these natural signals and turn them into musical compositions, creating a rich array of sounds that reflect the game's story and setting.
Idea #2: Autonomous Agents
The hottest topic in AI right now is autonomous agents. These are AI-powered characters that mimic realistic human behavior. They interact with users and their surroundings, make decisions, and adjust their actions based on their unique traits, likes, dislikes, abilities, and goals. Perfect for simulation games.
This is an awesome primer on the topic:
TL;DR (or watch?)
Researchers used autonomous agents in a virtual world inspired by The Sims.
Agents had memories, performed actions, and reacted to events.
Agents had three main parts: observation, planning, and reflection.
A large language model (LLM) stored agents' experiences in everyday language.
Users could chat with agents, and agents could start conversations.
Some ideas to explore at the game jam:
Ethical Dilemmas: Develop a game where agents represent different people in synbio. Designer babies? Genetically-modified mosquitoes? Bioweapons? Self-replicating xenobots? Users chat with agents to discuss ethical questions that could profoundly impact our world.
Synbio Lab Simulator: Create a simulation where players run a synbio lab with agents as staff. Players balance agents' traits and goals to manage a successful lab and achieve research objectives, such as inventing fascinating biotechnologies.
Creative Synbio Sandbox: Design a sandbox world where users explore synbio's creative side with agents. They collaborate to invent new organisms or treatments, with agents offering unique insights and expertise.
Synbio Strategy Game: Craft a game where players build a thriving ecosystem using synbio concepts. Agents represent groups with varying goals and strategies. Players tackle challenges like creating new organisms or preventing environmental disasters while considering the ethical consequences of their actions.
Idea #3: Paper-to-Games
Traditional ways of sharing research, like manuscripts, can be hard to understand for many people. They're often long and complicated. One creative way to make science easier to grasp is by using text-to-game platforms, turning complex ideas into simple graphics and gameplay. By making a platform that turns research papers into interactive games, we can make science more accessible and enjoyable for everyone.
Coin_Artist, founder of Blockade Labs, will talk about "building a text-to-game future" at the event, which is a great chance to ask questions and see what you can create with their platform.
Hugging Face is a sponsor for the event. They’re a company that provides tools and resources for working with AI models. They’re providing GPU grants on Spaces, which makes it easy to create and deploy machine learning-powered demos quickly. One model that we can play with is BioGPT. It’s an AI model trained on millions of papers and could be used in the text-to-game conversion process.
Here’s an MVP that you could explore at the game jam:
Easy uploading: Make a user-friendly system for uploading research papers in different formats.
AI-driven conversion: Use AI to change research papers into interactive games.
Game templates: Offer templates for various research topics, ensuring fun and relevant gaming experiences.
Community feedback: Let users rate, review, and give feedback on games, helping the AI model improve its output.
Social media integration: Include sharing options to promote games and increase engagement with scientific research.
Analytics tracking: Track user engagement, feedback, and game performance to guide future improvements and enhancements.
Idea #4: Biotic Games
I love the idea of connecting player choices to real-life actions. This opens up an entirely new game genre. In Ender's Game, Ender unknowingly participates in a real battle while believing it's a simulation. Biotic games draw from this concept, merging virtual simulations with real-life biological processes.
We previously explored a biotic game called Pac-Euglena, inspired by Pac-Man. In this game, players control live Euglena cells in a tiny maze using light.
Super simple game, but it’s a great proof-of-concept. Now, imagine a biotic game featuring xenobots, programmable organisms made from frog cells. Developers could create virtual simulations with puzzles and challenges. As players progress through increasingly difficult levels, they can unlock access to a remote lab, where their choices influence real-life xenobot actions.
Biotic games have three components:
Bioware: Living organisms, like microbes, are programmed using genetic parts to respond to stimuli, such as light or chemicals.
Hardware: Devices, like biotic processing units (BPUs), connect bioware and players. BPUs can be built with affordable electronics, like Arduino, or specialized equipment, like webcam microscopes.
UI: Tools players use to interact with the game, like touchscreens or joysticks, and the system for rules or open play.
I don’t expect attendees to make a BPU during the game jam. But choosing a bioware and creating a UI is certainly doable.
Some ideas to explore at the game jam:
Tiered system: Design a progression system that unlocks cloud lab features as players advance, providing a sense of achievement.
Imaginative visuals: Enhance real-world cellular environments, like petri dishes or microfluidic chambers, by overlaying appealing visuals, such as unique biomes or captivating designs, to create some truly immersive game worlds.
Thomas Karagianes from Eterna, a game focusing on RNA folding, is speaking at the event. Ask questions and learn from their platform.
Idea #5: CYOA Games
This one’s inspired by a chat with Tony Kulesa. Creating CYOA games that explore the world of synbio can be an exciting project to work on during the game jam. CYOA games let players make choices that affect the story's outcome.
Emm, founder of Scenario, will be at the game jam discussing “GenAI for creating style-consistent game assets”. You can use Scenario's platform to explore this idea.
Here’s some ideas that you could explore at the game jam:
"The Living Labyrinth”: Players become a synthetic biologist invited to a mysterious lab for a groundbreaking project. They'll explore interconnected, living labyrinths with unique ecosystems and synthetic organisms, facing challenges and ethical dilemmas. Players' choices impact the narrative and the world, offering branching storylines and multiple endings. Sharing choices, strategies, and endings with the community encourages discussions about synbio's ethical implications.
"Personalized Synbio Adventure": Players embark on a journey of self-discovery and scientific exploration as a synthetic biologist. You can incorporate real experiments and real labs. They encounter challenges and obstacles personalized to their interests and skills. Could be a fun way to connect to real scientists and their work.
Creating simple text-based RPGs with GPT-4 can be done fairly quickly during the game jam, but for more visually appealing games, consider using tools like Scenario and Blockade Labs.
We can no longer embed tweets in Substack articles, so please check out Blockade Labs’ tweet for brief CYOA guide.
Idea #6: Sandbox Games
This is an idea that we also explored in a previous article. Sandbox games, like Minecraft, are digital playgrounds. They give players creative freedom to experiment, build, and create without predetermined goals. One interesting project to explore during the game jam is a crafting and inventory system for synbio.
Developers and synthetic biologists could create a simple crafting and inventory system using real genetic parts from publicly available repositories like iGEM. The inventory might include genetic material, cells, microbes, media, and equipment. Players could use the crafting system to create new organisms, develop genetic enhancements, produce biotech products, or design hybrid organisms.
Don’t Forget to RSVP
Alright, that's it for now. The ideas shared here are just a small sample of what you can explore at the game jam. This event is an experiment. It’s the first one. While there will be several unique prizes, the main goal is for participants to collaborate and have fun. So think deeply and build creatively.
A huge thank you to Fifty Years for their continued support. They're providing a beautiful space for us this weekend!
Thank you to Blockade Labs for sponsoring the pre-jam mixer and Hugging Face for the GPU grants.
Shoutout to our amazing speakers:
Thomas Karagianes (Eterna): Scientific Discovery Games
Marguerite deCourcelle (Blockade Labs): Building a Text-to-Game Future
Emmanuel de Maistre (Scenario): GenAI for Creating Style-Consistent Game Assets
Christina Wodtke (Stanford): Designing Serious Games Schedule
Looking forward to seeing some of your faces on Saturday! Stay tuned for pics from the event!
Thanks for reading The Gameful Scientist! I’d love to hear your thoughts below.
Feel free to contact me here or chat with me on Twitter @ATrotmanGrant :)