Just imagine biochemists concocting proteins as online puzzle games and casting them into a magic circle where, instead of jumping, chasing, and kicking, players wiggle, shake, pull, and push amino acids to construct the structure of actual proteins, design new proteins, and discover new protein manipulation algorithms. It is the story of this felicitous symbiosis of crowdsourcing, citizen science, and gameplay that the book celebrates.

The book consists of seven fairly short chapters. It describes in general terms the development and use of Foldit (http://centerforgamescience.org/portfolio/foldit/), an online game intended to provide, through puzzles and gameplay, players with capabilities to predict protein structure, to design novel proteins, and to elaborate new algorithms. Built on top of Rosetta (http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/), Foldit is a puzzle game that uses powerful protein manipulation operators to empower players with the necessary actions to solve protein-related puzzles.

The first two chapters introduce the issues of game design and biochemistry discovery. A cursory overview of the literature on human computation, serious games, and computational biochemistry is given. Issues of game design for scientific discovery are briefly discussed. Chapter 3 elaborates the framework underlying scientific discovery through video games. The tensions, challenges, and complexity of developing scientific discovery games by integrating scientific research, games, and casual players are identified. Prototyping and iterative development involving all stakeholders were used to implement the game.

Chapter 4 discusses the use of Foldit by players to predict the structure of proteins. Three major phases are discussed. Players undergo preliminary training by solving simple puzzles. Once successful, they move on to the next stage, which consists of solving competitive problems. It is shown that solutions discovered by players fare better than those generated by Rosetta. Chapter 5 addresses protein design. This activity required extending the functionality of Foldit to support design. The efficacy of the game is shown by having the players solve a series of puzzles, the goals of which are to redesign known proteins under certain constraints. Again players were able to derive designs that were competitive. Chapter 6 describes another added capability, that is, a cookbook tool to give players the option to codify their problem-solving tasks either by using macros or by programming them. This capability enhanced sharing among players and provided a platform upon which the resulting algorithms could be reused, modified, or adapted. The last chapter summarizes the results and hints at some future work, such as the acquisition of domain expertise by casual players and the formalization of human strategies.

This book is an edited version of the author’s dissertation. It reports on the success of an experiment with several interesting results. However, for the technically inclined, it offers very little detail. The narrative style is limited to exposing the issues and then showing results. The process linking the two is missing. Notwithstanding the arguments whether Foldit can be categorized as a game [1], there remain several claims that require further assessment. Large parts of the book were published in different venues. It does not seem there was careful editing to remove repetitions in the process of integrating the published papers.