We're part of an upcoming documentary! "The Revenge of video games" will be broadcast this upcoming Sunday, January 11 on the French Canadian channel, Canal D, at 7pm (rerun Thursday, January 15 at 12 am, Friday, January 16 at 10 am). If you know of (or are) someone living in Québec, let them know! (When we hear about this documentary being broadcast to a large audience or in English, we'll let you know.)
I translate the conclusion of a French newspaper "Le Monde" about this subject:
The idea of the paper is that learning needs some ex-post evaluation of the knowledge gained, which is contrary to the idea of game. Game is "loosing time" to do something useless with immediate satisfaction. An useful game can be seen as a contradiction.
I think that Foldit achieved some sufficient level of "game", if I compare it to other boring serious games where we are asked to do some repeating job.