Gift Players or Playbourers? Who Is Playing Citizen Science Games?

Sonia Fizek's paper examines citizen science games, sometimes called games with a purpose or human-based computation games, in which players contribute to research by solving puzzles, classifying data, or tagging content. The central example is EteRNA, a digital laboratory where more than 38,000 player-scientists assemble RNA shapes, though the paper situates it within a broader trend that includes projects such as Eye Wire, Galaxy Challenge, Metropolitalia, and ARTigo. The paper's main argument is that existing frameworks for understanding unpaid digital activity, which emphasize free labour, monetization, and "playbour," fail to capture what motivates these players.

The author contends that citizen science players are driven neither by monetary compensation nor by a purely frivolous desire to play. Instead, they participate in an economy of reciprocal giving and receiving, drawing on Marcel Mauss's theory of the gift and Malinowski's account of the kula exchange. Within this framework, scientists return value to players through enjoyable game mechanics, membership in the research community, the status of citizen-scientist, and acknowledgment as co-authors on academic papers, with the ultimate hope of scientific benefits such as medical solutions. The paper positions these players as "gift players," a category distinct from the capital-oriented "playbourers" described in existing game studies literature.

The analysis is theoretical and based on a case study of citizen science games, with EteRNA serving as the primary illustration, and it draws on comparisons to earlier virtual communities such as MUDs. The paper does not present quantitative survey data or a defined sample. Its contribution lies in reframing citizen science gaming as a form of gift exchange within a playful space, offering a conceptual alternative to digital economy perspectives on unpaid play.