Plague Inc Comes To Life
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be a Virus causing a global pandemic? Plague Inc. allows you to do just that. The strategic and innovative game, described as “terrifyingly realistic” was developed under the Games studio Ndemic Creations in 2012. It certainly feels terrifying, because 8 years later, today, it closely resembles the real global pandemic we are all experiencing. The game gives a player the opportunity to virtually live and encounter the life of life-threatening viruses creating havoc for humankind. The game starts by having you select a plague, develop its symptoms, and then continuously mutate, to battle against humankind, governments and scientists, thereby, eventually threatening our very existence.
You may begin the game in the location of your choice, where the virus starts by infecting the unsuspecting “Patient Zero”. You get “DNA Points” by evolving, and infecting and subsequently “destroying” human beings. You can use your “DNA Points” for selecting different modes of transmission, various symptoms and mutated and evolved abilities. Gradually, in the game, you (as a virus) progress to spread across the world, eventually causing a global pandemic, more importantly learning to adapt to everything that humanity throws at you in order to defend yourself (as a virus in the game). The game isn’t just entertainment — it also serves a second more important functionality — public awareness on disease transmission, on the basics of epidemiology and on the importance of preserving and saving our environment and planet earth and most importantly all of humanity.
As of now, unconventional as this seems, the game has been successful. In 2013, the CDC even invited its founder James Vaughan to speak about how he came to develop the application, to ensure the game was realistic for its users, and to build various disease models and algorithms. James in fact started out developing this game as a hobby, working evenings and weekends, and eventually teamed up with free lancers to improve and develop it into the game it is today.
A crucial segment of the game is the “Infection cycle” which took him months to conceptualise and implement — this is the stage in the game where people are infected with the disease and begin to transmit it to others. The model revolves around reproduction rate R0 (sounds familiar?), which is affected by contact rate, probability of infection given contact and infection duration. In short, a R0 of 1 means each new primary case with a disease can produce 1 more new secondary case. To give you some context, the deadly COVID-19 virus which we are at war with today, has a R0 of approximately 2.
Another feature available in Plague Inc, is that a user can also name their disease and evolve it to make it deadly enough before it wipes out humankind. Popular names for diseases in the past few years are also quite varied, ranging from science fiction “Zombie”, to insults such as “Stupidity” and others such as “Love”. Some users have even named the virus after their friends and ex-boyfriends/girlfriends.
The game is currently played by over 120 million users worldwide, and is a highly rated game on the App Store. It grew to become even more popular this year, at around the same time the Corona Virus started to spread. The impact of the outbreak, has triggered the company to work on a new version of the game in which winners are redefined as the ones saving humankind through medically and scientifically developed counter attacks on the deadly virus, eventually saving the world. They have also contributed to support the WHO and CEPI during this phase. “Players will have to balance managing disease progression and boosting healthcare systems as well as controlling real-world actions such as triaging, quarantining, social distancing, and closing of public services.”
I like the encouraging message that the new version of this game gives us. The point that there’s light at the end of the tunnel and that the dark tunnel will not be long if we come together in caring for our planet and all its inhabitants is better highlighted.
If you haven’t yet tried the game Plague Inc and have some extra time on you, it is probably worth giving it a try. How interesting is it, that a game developed in 2012 can become a reality 8 years later? I wonder how many other games could potentially come to life; A real life Pac-man? I hope not.
This article is purely my opinion and does not represent the opinions of any person, group, website or firm
