Pandemic+II++(David)

I will be discussing [|Pandemic II], a browser game that simulates the spread of infectious diseases on a global scale. The player plays from the perspective of a disease, directing its evolution toward a purpose of infecting as many humans as possible. The game ends when there are no humans left with the disease, either because it has been cured and eradicated (a loss for the player) or because there are no more live humans (a victory). Players can select one of two difficulty modes, "relaxed" or "realistic" (I selected "realistic", because what else is the point?), and one of three pathogen types: parasite, bacteria, and virus. Each of these types is differentiated, with parasites evolving slowly yet being more hardy against the environment, viruses evolving quickly and being more vulnerable to environmental changes, and bacteria representing a balance. The player names the disease, and the game then begins with an initial outbreak of your new affliction in a random location. Time advances at a steady rate, though the game can be played at three speeds.

The world map is divided into a number of regions, though the game treats these regions as though they are united countries. Each region has a government that will take steps (such as exterminating vermin or distributing masks and bottled water) to curb the spread of disease. Located within the regions are hospitals and research laboratories, which treat the sick and can be used to research a vaccine for your disease (though the vaccine may or may not be effective, in the latter case the humans will attempt to try again). Diseases can spread across regional borders (which canny governments can close), or through seaports and airports; the map depicts ocean and air traffic to regions that have not yet reacted to the pandemic. Finally, the regions are subject to various natural disasters which can make them more vulnerable to certain kinds of infection.

The player accumulates "evolution points" over time, which increase more rapidly as your disease spreads among the population. Evolution points are then spent in the "disease" tab to customize your pathogen. Some options include evolving additional disease vectors (rodents, water, insects, and airborne), environmental and drug resistances, and new symptoms. Symptoms are characterized by their potential to cause death, their potential to increase transmission rates, and their potential to be noticed (which serves to alert health workers to its presence).

I attempted four playthroughs of this game, in each case failing to achieve the annihilation of humankind. My first plague, a parasite called The Frug, originated in Eastern Europe and managed to spread throughout most of Eurasia and Northern Africa, but was effectively stymied when governments closed their borders, and was eventually extinguished by a vaccine.

The Frug was a naive first attempt, and I tried to be more strategic with my next plague, a bacterium known as The Robocop. The Robocop originated in Madagascar and was designed for maximum infectious potential, without regard to visibility. It spread quickly and managed to infect every country in the world, with the single exception of Peru, the only region on the map with neither an airport nor a seaport. My game ended frustratingly when every non-Peruvian in the world succumbed, leaving the Peruvians to repopulate the planet.

Next up was a virus called The Freddie, which was an experiment to see the efficacy of attempting to systematically imbue the pathogen with every possible symptom, method of transmission, etc. Despite some early success in spreading from Brazil through the rest of the Americas (plus Indonesia), it soon suffered the fate of the Frug, though with more success in killing off nearly the entire Western Hemisphere.

My final attempt to destroy the world came in the form of a parasite named The Smurf. I intended to take the world by surprise, minimizing visibility and mortality while maximizing infectiousness and durability. However, The Smurf never even made it out of Canada, which quickly quarantined itself from the rest of the world. As the disease slowly grew in mortality, a vaccine was developed, and though I managed to devastate Canada's population to a meager 5,422 people, I could not wipe them out.

A number of things became apparent in the course of the game, which from my background knowledge I took to be a reflection of the realities of epidemiology. One was that it mattered significantly where a disease originated: Peru was annihilated by The Freddie, which came from next door Brazil, but was spared the onslaught of the much more virulent Robocop bacterium because it had closed its borders long before its nearest neighbors were infected. Vaccines did not always work as intended on the first try, and the effectiveness of various public health measures like quarantines is variable. And of course, the game ends in a "loss" if every single infected person died: natural selection does not favor too much lethality in a pathogen, as that would ultimately lead to the extinction of the pathogen when its hosts went extinct. This last lesson is somewhat undercut by the game's "eradicate all human life" ethos, wherein victory is only achieved if no one is left alive at all. But without a goal like that, the object of the game becomes "exist indefinitely", and that's not nearly as fun.

Since the humans' response to the disease is largely out of the player's control, most of what the player practices is the control of the pathogen's evolution. A player would recognize that the symptoms of a disease are heritable traits, much like human hair color, and they exist to allow the organism to propagate itself. Of course, natural evolution is random and undirected, but genetic engineering is also possible, and this game offers a look at what a genetically engineered virus might look like. So there is an interesting intersection between biology, ecology, and even social studies in this game.

The game has a tutorial, which mainly just explains the terminology used without necessarily suggesting strategies. It is largely up to the player to experiment with different infection strategies over successive playthroughs. This is a form of the probing principle, extended somewhat. There are of course multiple routes to designing a fearsome pandemic, so no playthrough is likely to be identical even if the disease begins in the same geographic location. As far as identities go, this game causes players to assume a somewhat nebulously defined role. The player may see themself as the conscious avatar of the disease itself; alternatively they may decide they are some kind of terrorist or mad scientist, or perhaps a wrathful deity. In any case, their identity is opposed to what might be called the common good of humanity, which holds some appeal to rebellious teenagers, I would suppose. They can observe the cultural model of disease controls (methods for fighting pandemics) from a detached perspective, which is not typical in media conversations about disease (where the listener is usually assumed to be vulnerable to infection).

I found the game to be very interesting in the short run, and potentially useful as an instructional tool. From an entertainment perspective it has a number of flaws. For instance, it has a minimal level of interaction, as most of the action is automated: the player simply waits for evolution points to accumulate, then makes a few decisions that lead to further automated actions. There are a number of situations where further expansion becomes manifestly impossible, at which point the game consists in waiting for everyone to either die or be cured, with little further meaningful interaction. An effective method for crossing through closed borders would have been a big improvement to this game, making it more winnable to strategic and patient players.

It seemed to me that an effective lesson might be to project the game on a big screen and have the class participate in a sort of democratic action, discussing strategy and watching it play out. Alternatively, the students could compete separately in the computer lab for high scores, which the teacher would record. After this lesson, the students could do written responses explaining the effectiveness of their strategies, as well as the other factors that contributed to the success of their diseases.