Project Discovery is a collaborative, crowdsourced effort to reward players in-game for helping out on what are effectively “citizen science” projects. Last year’s program tasked players with identifying cell structures to assist the Human Genome Project. This particular leg of the program, first revealed at last spring’s EVE Fanfest in Iceland, sets players to work hunting for exoplanets in other solar systems. Players have the option of analyzing a star’s luminosity to see if there are any dips, signifying that a planet has crossed between the star and the telescope. The more accurate a player is in his or her analysis (compared to the rest of the EVE community), the more experience points will be doled out for a special reward track.
Some of the leads on this latest project just finished up a Reddit AMA today, and a couple of the answers might actually be of interest, particularly the one on whether you have to be a die-hard EVE player to participate. It turns out you really don’t!
“Yes, you can play EVE (for free) and as soon as you create your character you can certainly stay docked in station and only do Project Discovery if that’s your thing.”
“There is no need for you to play the core EVE game itself. Simply logging on through a free account, going through a quick character creator and launching the Project Discovery game on the left task bar of the UI is all you need to do in EVE to participate. Assuming helping science is sufficient reward in itself for you. Hint: it should be.”
Check out the tutorial on Project Discovery below!
