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Virtual Disease Offers Clues To Real Life Epidemics

In September of 2005, a deadly plague spread across the world. It affected people from every walk of life, from children to businessmen, and in many of the developed nations of the world. People took flight to escape the touch of the disease, some helped the afflicted others simply lost it and dropped dead. You may be wondering why this wasn’t on the news, and what this has to do with games. The disease was called “Corrupted Blood” and it only affected Azeroth, the virtual world in which World of Warcraft is set.

Epidemiologists, those that study how diseases are spread, are interested in the behaviours displayed by the inhabitants of Azeroth in the hopes that it may offer some insight into how human behaviour contributes to the propagation of real world plagues. Professor Nina Fefferman from Tufts University School of Medicine said to the BBC that:

“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.”

In the past epidemiologists have had to rely on real epidemics and computer models that were based on guesswork to predict peoples behaviour in these stressful situations. Virtual environments populated with real people, much like MMO’s, could be used in future to more accurately determine how people will behave when such a plague breaks out.
(From The BBC via Games Digest.)