Scientists Use MMORPGs to Study Viral Outbreaks

September 28, 2007 · Filed Under MMORPG News, Infotech, Online, Gaming 

If ever you saw virus infection movies like Outbreak or have read (or saw in NatGeo or Discovery) about the potential disaster of what a full-blown SARS or bird flu (NHN1) infection can likely do to humanity, you’d know how big the problem is.

To further study the potential of dangerous diseases and perhaps how to contain it, scientists are turning to MMORPGs to find answers.

They have used World of Warcraft to simulate a viral epidemic.

Called the “Corrupted Blood” disease, it is fast spreading and has already killed off thousands of avatars in that game.

The infection raged, wreaking social chaos, despite quarantine measures.

The experience provided essential clues on how people behave in such crises, Lancet Infectious Diseases reports.

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 behaviour, but said this could be estimated and allowed for when drawing conclusions.

Computer models allow for experimentation on virtual populations without such limitations, but still rely on mathematical rules to approximate human behaviour.

A virtual world may be a way to bridge this gap, said Professor Fefferman.

Via BBC.co.uk news

Photo Source: Gaming Today

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Comments

5 Responses to “Scientists Use MMORPGs to Study Viral Outbreaks”

  1. fatman on September 28th, 2007 9:18 pm

    Actually, “they” didn’t “make” it. It was an accident or more correctly, a bug in the program. That makes it a lot more similar to a real life situation. There were questions a few years ago about how a certain British researcher managed to die of a smallpox infection. Smallpox was supposedly extinct. Luckily, most of the British population at that time were still vaccinated against smallpox so it didn’t spread.

  2. Mimizilla on September 29th, 2007 1:58 am

    OT: wow > everything else. k.

  3. JC John SESE Cuneta on September 29th, 2007 3:49 pm

    I agree with fatman, the WoW “Corrupted Blood” disease was not intentional and not part of a scientific experiment.

    I read the BBC article, it just used WoW’s “bug” as an example of what could happen in real-life and how virtual worlds can be used. Actually, there were similar articles last year saying the same thing, back when the bug occured.

    I was there, one of the survivors.. but personally, knowing that “it is ONLY a game”, I left them all and went outside where it is safer. :p In real-life, which is not a game anymore, I would have helped in any way I can. I think that is one factor scientists should never forget to consider - players who recognize a “game” as it is vs players who treat these games as “reality”. Most reactions depend on those two differences.

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  5. Castigador on October 1st, 2007 6:47 am

    I heard this somewhere before. It was pretty cool, since you’d see the players trying (and failing) to contain the bug. Still, seeing loads of skeletons is something to behold.

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