I've read several articles about how scientific research has used video games as a means to get humans to process complex data. (For instance,
Play to Cure: Genes in Space) I like this idea, but I imagine that it's hard to build up a player base for each individual project. What if someone made a standard programming package to allow this to be integrated into any game, so that, say, the hacking mini-game to open locks is actually
tracing a nerve's path across a mouse retina. Or maybe, does that one month, and then gets updated to process genetic results later, once the original project is finished. Can you imagine the amount of human processing power that researchers could harness if, say, the next Arkham game had it's code-breaking minigame actually tied to real life data processing?