Because Being a Scientist Isn't Nerdy Enough

When I'm not doing science, one of my favorite pastimes is playing a mobile game called Jurassic World Alive (JWA). The easiest way to explain the game is that it's Pokémon Go with dinosaurs, but honestly, there's actually a lot more to it than that. JWA arrived on the market almost 2 years after Pokémon Go (March 6 2018 vs. July 6 2016), so Ludia (the marker of JWA) knew they had to differentiate if they were to have a chance.

One of the smart things they did was to lean into complexity. Even after you find a creature in the wild, getting its DNA is itself a mini game that requires skill (video). And when it comes to battling, the move sets of each creature are closer to an MMORPG (like World of Warcraft) than to Go. For example, look at the screenshot below for Trykosaurus, which is one of the best creatures in the game. What a wall of text! Four different moves, three of which are completely different from each other, ranging from 100% offense to 100% defense. Plus, an automatic counter-attack with multiple aspects, a passive partial resistance to vulnerability, and variably boosted strengths (health, attack, and speed). Obviously, I don't expect you to understand all of that, but the point is: it's complicated!

I started this game when it first came out, but then took a month off from it (and just about everything else) to complete and submit my PhD dissertation. After that, I returned to the game with renewed interest, and out of that excitement I helped start a team in the game, which is called an alliance. That alliance, named Parks N Wreck, is now one of the top alliances in the game. In fact, by one metric, we reached #4 last weekend! (For reference, I estimate there are about 16,000 active alliances in the game.)

However, what really keeps me involved in the game is something called sanctuaries. These are basically animal sanctuaries where you can place creatures, and they have a Tamagotchi-like aspect: in JWA, feeding and playing with the creatures gives you extra DNA, which helps you to make your creatures ever stronger.

Of course, I'm probably dating myself with Tamagotchi reference there, so let me explain. Tamagotchi were digital pets that you had to feed and take care of or else they'd die. There were a fad of the late 90s and early 2000s. (Click on the image to see an animation.)

Honestly, when JWA first introduced sanctuaries, I didn't really understand the appeal. Almost no one did. They seemed like an annoyance with very small benefits. However, a couple inquisitive players, including myself, tinkered with the sanctuaries and discovered a very interesting quirk: with enough planning and coordination, you could actually get hundreds of players working on the same sanctuary together. When that happens, the rewards become quite significant.

I recently learned that another player discovered this same sanctuary trick about a month before I did, but her first instinct was to contact Ludia and ask if they would consider it an exploit. Ludia replied that was an unintended quirk and should be regarded as an exploit, so she stopped using the trick. Independently, I discovered the same trick about a month later. Since I wasn't doing anything unusual, merely using the menus provided in the game, it never occurred to me that it was an exploit, and I started telling others how I did it. It's unclear whether I was the only instigator, but I certainly never encountered another one. Soon, knowledge of the trick snowballed to the point where Ludia realized it had become an important part of the game for many players, and they fully embraced it.

I now co-lead one of the most successful "co-ops" in the game. We marshal about 900 players to build three sanctuaries in about 48 hours and share those sanctuaries with 18 different alliances. The logistics of that undertaking are prodigious. Once every two weeks, it takes me probably 5 hours to plan and launch the sanctuary. I have spreadsheets and even a Python program that I've written to help organize and optimize the build. It massively appeals to the technical and logistical side of me. Perhaps it's no coincidence that of the three top organizers in my co-op, all 3 have PhDs. One is even a part-time professor.

What can I say? I guess being a scientist just wasn't nerdy enough for me.