Project Discovery Lets EVE Players Fight COVID-19

While most of the news around here might be focused primarily on the George Floyd and Black Lives Matters protests, it’s easy to forget --- but important to remember – that COVID-19 is still a thing, and still killing people all over the world… but mostly in the States. Living safely and finding a cure is still of paramount importance, and to that end, EVE developer CCP Games have announced that for the third time in their games history they’re launching a new Project Discovery, with the express goal of letting players become citizen scientists and start trying to find a cure.

And they do this, of course, by playing a brand-new mini-game where they have to catalogue flow cytometers.
 

“Flow cytometry is a technique used to detect and measure physical and chemical characteristics of cells, especially those of the immune system that are important in the body’s response to infection with SARS-CoV-2, the strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19.”

Apparently, playing this minigame and cataloguing flow cytometers will actively be helping scientists who are in the process of trying to find a cure for this deadly disease…. And if that wasn’t good enough reason to play, you can also earn unique cosmetics as well as some of the most rare and valuable ships in the game. Who says it doesn’t pay to be good?

As I mentioned earlier, this is actually the third time EVE Online has used Project Discovery to better the real world through their digital one. Previously, they used it to help out the human protein, and to look for unidentified exoplanets. This is arguably the most important use of Project Discovery to date, and by the looks of things, we’ll all get plenty of time to make the world a better place – while unlocking cool stuff along the way.