|
How do you study the spread of an epidemic, and thus form an emergency plan to ensure the survival of the human race, without putting the population at risk of a real disease? Play a game.
World of Warcraft is currently the world's largest massively multiplayer online role-playing gameWorld of Warcraft takes place in a 3D-representation of the Warcraft universe that players can interact with through their characters. The game features three continents on the world of Azeroth and a separate planet known as Draenor, home of the Orc and Draenei characters, now referred to as Outland.
In September 2005, about 4 million World of Warcraft gamers experienced a new and unexpected challenge in the game. Players exploring a new area within the game encountered an extremely virulent, highly contagious disease, known as Corrupted Blood, which had been introduced in an update on the 13th of that month. Within hours Corrupted Blood had infected entire cities such as Ironforge and Orgrimmar because of their high player concentrations. Low-level players were killed in seconds by the high-damage disease. Corrupted Blood quickly spread, like the Black Death, to the population centers of the fantasy world, killing many and causing social chaos. But, who, other than the gamers themselves should care about virtual deaths and digital disease?
We all should care because the virtual epidemic could provide a very useful model of how diseases spread, how individuals and groups respond to the presence of a killer disease, and what we might do to control an outbreak, of bird flu or a SARS-type disease, in the real world.
Researcher Professor Nina Fefferman, from Tufts University School of Medicine, said: "Human behaviour has a big impact on disease spread. And virtual worlds offer an excellent platform for studying human behaviour."
"The players seemed to really feel they were at risk and took the threat of infection seriously, even though it was only a game."
She acknowledged that a virtual setting might encourage riskier behavior, but said this could be estimated and allowed for when drawing conclusions.
The corrupted blood plague in the computer game so closely resembled the outbreak of real-world epidemics and pandemics that other scientists are currently looking at ways online role playing games or other massively distributed systems can model human behavior during outbreaks. The reaction of players to the plague closely resembled previously hard-to-model aspects of human behavior that may allow researchers to more accurately predict how diseases and outbreaks spread amongst a population.
About The Author:
This article was written by Mark Soveign who writes for Wertheim Communications LLC as well as for Mooker.Com |