World of Pandemiccraft

[nuos]

Very very cool article just released on ABC news about the "Corrupted Blood" incident in WoW last year. A scientific paper was just released that actually used the incident, and the game in general to better understand the spread of disease in the real world. The article is getting slashdotted at the moment, so it may be a bit slow, but it's

Comments

[wurtlesworld]

The cover study for Science a few issues back was something similar. I don't know the details of it because I haven't gotten a chance to read it, but it was a project that used Second Life and WoW to investigate some sociological phenomenon or other. If you're interested and don't have access to Science, I can email you a copy. Let me know.

[demonofelru]

This is pretty neat, but it's hard to draw parallels, because I'm sure that there were many people like myself who would try to spread the disease to as many people as possible. I probably wouldn't do that if I had Ebola. :)

[nuos]

Right, the idea is though that they could "infect" players but without them knowing, thus they would just go about their business. Also, some people were running around in game trying to spread the disease, and although real people may not do exactly that, it can easily be likened to someone who refuses to stay home from work when sick. As for the innocent bystanders, well, they really *were* just going about their business as usual.

[wurtlesworld]

Like that moron from Atlanta that had that case of hard-to-treat TB and went to Europe for his wedding anyway, then snuck back in through Canada so he wouldn't get in trouble at a US airport...

[nuos]

EXACTLY.