Can experimenting with game design increase our chances of finding a cure for cancer? Cancer is crafty, forcing us to be just as clever in our efforts to outfox it—and we’ve made excellent progress, but is it time for a new play in the playbook?
In Gaming Cancer: How Building and Playing Video Games Can Accelerate Scientific Discovery (MIT Press, 2025), Jeff Yoshimi proposes a new approach to fighting an increasingly exhausting war. By putting the work of cancer research into the hands of nonspecialists, Yoshimi believes, we can accelerate the process of outgaming the disease once and for all. Gamers have already used “serious games” to discover new galaxies, digitize ancient texts, decode viruses, and solve theoretical problems in neuroscience. Cancer is a multilayered threat, and our best bet at overcoming it is via more minds working in concert. Gaming Cancer is an instruction manual for engineering games that motivate users to strain and sweat to find cancer cures. It integrates game design with research in cancer biology, data visualization techniques, and developments in cognitive science and AI while remaining sensitive to the limitations of citizen science and ethical concerns. Yoshimi sees in cutting-edge game technology the potential to educate and empower people to outwit cancer, an indirect route to richer science literacy that draws on the boundless resources of the mind. This book offers anyone invested in beating this seemingly intractable disease a concrete playbook that combines real science with creative vision in an effort to defeat the boss monster, cancer.
Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist.
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Jeff Yoshimi, "Gaming Cancer: How Building and Playing Video Games Can Accelerate Scientific Discovery" (MIT Press, 2025) | New Books Network podcast - Listen or read transcript on Metacast
