An investigation of player motivations in Eyewire, a gamified citizen science project

•A study to investigate player participation in the citizen science game, Eyewire.•A platform survey was conducted to elicit why and how they engage with Eyewire.•Four themes identified as core intrinsic and extrinsic motivations of participation.•Findings used to form a framework for designing volunteer citizen science projects.

Sustained engagement of participants is essential for the success of a citizen science project. However, the motivations of why people engage with such activities can be idiosyncratic, varied, and evolving. In this article we examine player participation in Eyewire, a citizen science game. We undertake an investigation of why Eyewire players take part in the game based on responses from a large-scale survey. Our analysis identifies 4 groups of features which impact participation and long-term engagement. We draw on theories of motivation and consider the 4 categories with respect to the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations of engagement. We assimilate our findings into a framework of volunteer participation for gamified citizen science, which draws on existing design frameworks, in order to support the design of future crowdsourced science projects.