Great questions! Foldit was actually launched in 2008, and has changed considerably in the interval. A lot of those changes have been motivated by feedback from Foldit players; but we are also continually updating Foldit to make it a better research tool, applicable to a broader range of biological puzzles. Even after nine years, we are still exploring the types of research problems to which Foldit players can contribute most effectively.

I think a lot of Foldit newcomers are quickly discouraged by the complexity of protein puzzles (folding proteins is hard!), and rarely finish the introductory puzzles. However, those that stick with it go on to compete in our weekly science puzzles, at which point it seems a user is more likely to stay. We have an incredible community of diligent and dedicated Foldit players, many of whom are just as much invested in the project as we are. A number of our most active users have been playing every week for several years!

Every week, we release new Foldit “puzzles” that are relevant to current problems in structural biology. Many problems related to protein folding are somewhat open-ended, or else implicate a vast number of possible solutions—these problems are difficult to solve by traditional computational approaches. Foldit puzzles frame these problem such that Foldit players can apply intuition and creativity to complement our computations. Occasionally Foldit players beat our supercomputers outright.

We haven’t conducted a full demographic survey in some time, so unfortunately I can’t describe the “typical” Foldit player. However, I can tell you anecdotally that we have Foldit players from around the world, from scientific and non-scientific backgrounds alike.

That’s a good question! It seems to me that protein folding problems are particularly suited to this kind of gamification, in which players can make such direct and substantial contributions to current research—then again, I’m a protein researcher, so this is only the field with which I’m most familiar. However, structural biology is a rich field, and there are many different types of problems within the field that we would like to tackle with Foldit. This work is very much ongoing!

You might also check out the videos for Nanocrafter and Mozak, both of which are fascinating applications of gamification conceived within the UW Center for Game Science.

I’m glad to hear that Foldit is being used in the classroom! There is indeed a non-game version of Foldit that you might find useful. It’s available through the UW Comotion website, and there is information about obtaining it at this link:
http://fold.it/standalone