Bringing science and games together? It is now done thanks to the wonderful event that was Scientific Game Jam, organised by the CNES, at Quai des savoirs last week!
A game jam? Only 48 hours to make a game based on a theme.
The twist? The theme is based on young researchers’ projects. I had the chance to go in as a PhD to present my thesis!
The result? A cute game called Yur-E’s brain, available on itch.io
The bonus? We won the public award!
My topic, which served as the theme, is the protection of satellites’ electronic devices against space radiation, and all that by using machine learning methods. If you are interested in more in-depth details about that, you can either reach out to me, or go see the related paper presenting my results (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405896322005158).
During the process, I was joined by a wonderful team of dev, artists and musician! I can’t even grasp how fun it was to casually talk about my research with them! Moreover, seeing my PhD project, a thing that has been my whole life for more than three years, come to life in a form of a fun and cute game is a fantastic experience!
About the game:
You help Yur-E on his first day at work. He’s in charge of protecting a satellite from evil radiation hazards. Unfortunately, his brain is not well-calibrated. As the player, you have to select the neurons to activate depending on the situation. Some neurons will prompt Yur-E with aggressive behaviour, while another one is responsible for smartness, or calmness. In the beginning, you have no idea which neuron is which. You have to experiment to discover each neuron’s purpose.
This mechanic is closely related to the concept of black box models in artificial intelligence and neural networks. In fact, research is done to discover the purpose of neurons in complex neural networks.
In the end, it was a fantastic experience. I met awesome people and I am very proud of the game we made! I didn’t get a lot of sleep, but it was worth every second!
If you speak French, the CNES made a nice recap of the event. You can even find my nice moustache at the end of the video!