View source for Epic Quest Bio

{{Short description|Role-playing game used to manage Molecular Reality Corporation}}
{{Redirect|EQBio|the members' software|EQBio-OS}}
{{Infobox software
| name = Epic Quest Bio
| logo = Brand-eqbio-game-logo.png
| logo caption = The game's logo, painted in the manner of 1980s box art
| developer = [[Molecular Reality Corporation]]
| released = 2021, as Epic Quest Biotechnology
| platform = [[EQBio-OS]]; e-mail, group chats, telephone calls and video meetings
| genre = Role-playing game; management system
| language = English
| website = [https://epicquest.bio epicquest.bio]
}}
'''Epic Quest Bio''' ('''EQBio'''), formerly '''Epic Quest Biotechnology''', is the role-playing game through which [[Molecular Reality Corporation]] organizes its work. The essay that introduces it says so in its first sentence: "Epic Quest Bio™ is a role-playing game that serves as the management system of the real-life biotech startup Molecular Reality Corporation."<ref name="essay" /> It is not a separate company, and its name is a trademark that Molecular Reality claims.<ref name="tm" /> Players, called [[Player Scientist]]s, choose two [[Character classes of Epic Quest Bio|character classes]], take on quests and earn [[Experience points (Epic Quest Bio)|experience points]]. The game's software is [[EQBio-OS]], and its players make up the [[Molecular Streaming Corps]].

The essay's second and third sentences are the game's motto: "We're on an epic quest to free mankind from disease. All sentient beings subject to disease are welcome to play."<ref name="essay" /> In August 2026 the company was "not currently recruiting new players".<ref name="faq" />

== Name ==
[[File:flyer-epic-quest.png|thumb|upright=0.9|"We're on an epic quest", the company's advertisement of about 2021, with its line "Advanced scientific instruments disguised as toys". The console in the picture is labelled "Just one possible form factor".]]
Kemmish was using the phrase "We are on an epic quest." by 2013.<ref name="records" /> In 2021 an advertisement headed "We're on an epic quest" built the company's mailing list, and a badge in the game still records it: "You saw a promo in 2021 that said 'join our epic quest', and you did!"<ref name="overview-post" /><ref name="records" /> The game itself was then called Epic Quest Biotechnology. Another badge, given to the earliest sign-ups, reads: "You signed up to play Epic Quest Bio™ when it was still Epic Quest Biotechnology™ and way too early as an experiment to really take off."<ref name="records" />

Kemmish later wondered aloud why he had called it Epic Quest Biotechnology "when it's kind of generic, first-idea sounding".<ref name="records" /> On March 29, 2025, the domain epicquest.bio was registered, and the game took the shorter name that spring.<ref name="rdap" /><ref name="records" /> The footer of the company's membership page reads "Epic Quest Bio is a trademark of Molecular Reality Corporation."<ref name="tm" /> Keltar's guide to the company calls it "our experimental management operating system for a biotech startup, built in the form of a game."<ref name="faq" />

== Origins ==
The essay gives the origin in two steps. First Kemmish concluded that an "army of Player Scientists™" was a better way to build molecular sensing for the home; then, "I realized that even the entire coordination structure needed was better served by a game than by a standard-issue VC-backed biotech startup." He names the model: "I was partly inspired by the Dungeons & Dragons campaigns I played as a child to realize that all the roles that one can play in a biotech startup can be thought of as 'character classes', just like those in D&D."<ref name="essay" /> His advisory-board biography traces his molecular games further back, to the video games he programmed as a child on the Commodore 64.<ref name="lifeboat" />

For the present the essay promises a tabletop game, run by the founder in person, "directly communicating with all players while we're still small enough to do it that way". Play would go through "whatever works: email, group chats, phone calls, google meets, maybe even some actual in-person meetups for those of us in the same places. It'll be messy and improvised, like the start of a real adventure should be."<ref name="essay" />

The company's 2022 overview of its plans gives the practical reason for making laboratory work into play. Solid-state nanopore research is "notoriously difficult", it says, because "hands-on ss-nanopore research is extremely tedious and expensive" and "strategic coordination rarely happens above the level of individual labs and companies". Its instrument was designed as a game console so that it "replaces the frustration of failed experiments with the fun and challenge involved in game play".<ref name="overview-post" /> The company calls the combination [[experigaming]].

The 2021 sign-up form asked each recruit for a favorite science fiction book or film, which of the planned molecular games they would choose, and what excited them about the company's console.<ref name="records" /> A 2026 message posted under the name of Jeanne d'Arc, one of the game's personas, links to "234 answers by real humans to the question 'what excites you most about what we're building?'" and adds: "Every so often I look at this and remember we're not crazy and/or alone in wanting to see this project come to fruition."<ref name="jeanne" />

== Play ==
=== Classes ===
{{Main|Character classes of Epic Quest Bio}}
A new player picks a major class and a minor one, "based on a mixture of two things: what you're actually best at in real life, and what you want to learn about and get better at."<ref name="essay" /> The essay lists eight, Barbarian, Bytebender, Cleric, Gearhead, Ludician, Sciencer, Sparky and SpellBinder, and writes each a job description. The Cleric does operations and law: "In D&D terms, you keep the party from dying of dysentery. In startup terms, you keep the organization from dying of dysfunction." The Gearhead is "basically the party's blacksmith, except your forge runs on 3D printer filament and G-code." Ludicians design games and understand "that fun might be the most powerful motivator in the universe".<ref name="essay" />

Sciencer gets a note on grammar. Anthimeria is the use of one part of speech as another, as when a character in ''The Martian'' says he will have to science his way out of trouble, and "The character class name 'Sciencer' anthimeriates 'science' full circle, from noun to verb and back to noun. In Epic Quest Bio™, Sciencers science." Every player does some science, the essay adds, "but Sciencers will science the most sciencely."<ref name="essay" /> In 2026 the classes were redrawn as nine painted posters and four of them renamed; Sciencer became Scientist.<ref name="records" />

=== Experience points and quests ===
{{Main|Experience points (Epic Quest Bio)}}
"XP stands for eXperience Points," the essay explains. "These are points you earn for attempting and/or successfully completing missions within the game."<ref name="essay" /> Each quest on the game's board carries a fixed reward. The largest, "Sequence DNA with an ss-nanopore", offers 9,900,000 XP, a sum that "represents a pool (unless, somehow, a single player does it!)". Lower down, "Banger Tweet" pays 500 XP ("Doesn't have to go viral, just has to be a banger!") and "Viral Tweet" 50,000 ("Doesn't have to be a banger, just has to go viral."), and a standing bug bounty pays "+10 XP for every way you find to break or mess up this website."<ref name="quests" />

One quest worth 500 XP, titled "MRC wikipedia page", reads in full: "Make an awesome (and accurate) wikipedia page about Molecular Reality Corporation." It has been switched off.<ref name="quests" />

=== The software ===
{{Main|EQBio-OS}}
Since March 2026 the game has been played in EQBio-OS, a members' web application laid out like an e-mail inbox, in which quests, awards, quizzes and videos arrive as messages from the founder and from characters such as [[Keltar]] and [[Maxine (character)|Maxine]].<ref name="welcome" /> Its guided tour describes where the game is meant to go. The members' avatars will one day appear in a "tileworld", and Epic Quest Bio is to grow "into a fully-featured MMORPG".<ref name="tour" /> The games the company has built or planned around its instruments, from ''[[Maxine's Quest]]'' to the quiz show "[[JeoPOREdy!]]", are listed at [[List of Molecular Reality Corporation games]].

== Status ==
In August 2026 the company's guide said that "Today we are not currently recruiting new players", and promised: "When doors open again, the site will say so, loudly, on its own front page."<ref name="faq" />{{efn|Since October 25, 2026, the front page of the company's websites has been the encyclopedia article [[Molecular Reality Corporation]].}}

== Reception ==
''Brownian Business Daily'' examined the game in October 2026 under the headline "A Biotech Run as a Role-Playing Game". It observed that "This newspaper has covered companies that adopted holacracy, objectives and key results, and four-day weeks. None of them had character classes."<ref name="p14" /> The paper read the quest board as a price list, "a fair map of what the company thinks is hard", and closed on the switched-off quest for a wikipedia page.<ref name="p14" />

== See also ==
* [[Badges of Epic Quest Bio]]
* [[Experigaming]]
* [[Player Scientist]]

== Notes ==
{{Notelist}}

== References ==
{{Reflist|refs=
<ref name="essay">{{cite web |title=Epic Quest Bio |author=Kemmishtree |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |year=2025}}</ref>
<ref name="tm">{{cite web |title=Epic Quest Bio: Join the Molecular Streaming Corps |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |date=2026}}</ref>
<ref name="faq">{{cite web |url=https://molecularreality.com/FAQ |title=Keltar's Field Guide to Molecular Reality |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |date=August 2026}}</ref>
<ref name="records">{{cite web |title=Company records |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |date=October 2026}}</ref>
<ref name="overview-post">{{cite web |title=2022 sci-tech overview |author=Kemmishtree |website=EQBio-OS |date=2026-03-28}}</ref>
<ref name="rdap">{{cite web |title=RDAP record for epicquest.bio |access-date=2026-10-25}}</ref>
<ref name="lifeboat">{{cite web |title=Kent Kemmish |publisher=Lifeboat Foundation |access-date=2026-10-25}}</ref>
<ref name="quests">{{cite web |title=Quests |website=EQBio-OS |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |access-date=2026-10-25}}</ref>
<ref name="welcome">{{cite web |title=welcome |author=Kemmishtree |website=EQBio-OS |date=2026-03-28}}</ref>
<ref name="tour">{{cite web |title=EQBio-OS tour |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |date=2026}}</ref>
<ref name="jeanne">{{cite web |title=Ecrasez l'infame! |author=Jeanne d'Arc |website=EQBio-OS |date=2026-03-29}}</ref>
<ref name="p14">{{cite news |title=A Biotech Run as a Role-Playing Game |work=Brownian Business Daily |author=Harriet Quill |date=2026-10-21 |url=/press/brownian/2026/10/21/gamified-management}}</ref>
}}

{{EQBio games}}
{{Molecular Reality}}

[[Category:Epic Quest Bio]]
[[Category:Molecular Reality Corporation]]
[[Category:Role-playing games]]
[[Category:Gamification]]