Hey veterans,
This is a request for help from anyone interested in the design of Eyewire as a game.
We are trying to understand how Eyewire requires particular skills from you as a player, and trains you in those skills. Skills in this sense are discrete, atomic ideas that the player builds up to larger strategies. For background on this, you can read Dan Cook’s article on the chemistry of game design.
My mission for you, should you choose to accept it, is to design what Eyewire’s skill “tree” would look like. What are Eyewire’s atomic skills, and how do they combine to create the larger strategies that difficult cells demand of you?
Dan Cook gives an example of a skill tree here, this one about the basics of Tetris. Our friends at Foldit have also made a small example about the basics of Mario.
You can make your own skill tree using draw.io. When you’ve finished drawing your skill tree, please either post it here or send it to Amy at support@eyewire.org.
Your help in designing this skill tree will be hugely valuable to research on Eyewire and citizen science games broadly. Thank you so much for taking the time to help with this project. I am excited to see what you create, and even more excited at the potential that these trees may be used in the future development of Eyewire!
For science!
Will have a closer look (if i had time enough). I always think, pictures would help a lot. E.g. of typical cubes that point out a specific question like “merger”, “missalignement”, “shape-of-neurons-and-not” in contrast like the same cube in which wrong segments are added to demonstrate this etc. What me troubled most are these relict cubes which apparently have a connection to a branch coming across, but it doesn´t belong. Although there might be one (there is space to fill with paint in 2D) - but it is wrong. Also those little nubs, that are missing. Wow do i recognize this? Are there hints at trace-end? (often there are). Does trace look complete, clear and so on. To give all the new players a sensibility of a trace or cube, that looks “ok” and “not”, or this trace will lead into wrong direction, will have an unnormal angle: would be helpful to have special cubes that handle this problem. Perhaps one could make different skill-trees for New Player, Advanced, Scout and Scythe. Each have their own point of interest at game-play. “What-to-do-if …” from duplicate to freeze. Hope i made clear, what i wanted to say - i´m not sure if i can realize this, but try to do some work on it 
