Online games may help battle epidemics

 

A FANTASY plague that ran amok in the internet's most popular game world may help scientists predict the impact of genuine epidemics.

A study says virtual playgrounds, such as World of Warcraft, populated by nine million flesh-and-blood players, could become testing grounds for the real battle against bird flu, malaria or some as-yet-unknown virus.

One of the study's authors, Nina Fefferman of RutgersUniversity in New Jersey, has confirmed that discussions are under way with Blizzard, which created World of Warcraft in 2004.

They are investigating how future updates might yield useful scientific data.

"As technology and biology become more heavily integrated in daily life, this small step towards the interaction of virtual viruses and humans could become highly significant," she said.

The unlikely path to a collaboration between hard science and hard-core gaming began in late 2005, when Blizzard programmers introduced a highlycontagious disease – dubbed "Corrupted Blood" – into a newly created zone of the game's Byzantine environment.

World of Warcraft is a "multiplayer online role-playing game" in which players – numbering in the tens, or hundreds of thousands – use computer-controlled avatars to fight battles, form alliances, and dialogue simultaneously on the internet.

At first, the "patch", as new elements such as the disease are called, worked as expected: experienced players shrugged it off like a bad cold, and weaker ones were left with disabled avatars.

But then things spun out of control.

As in reality, some of those carrying the virus slipped back into the virtual world's densely populated cities, rapidly infecting their defenceless inhabitants.

The disease also spread – much like real influenza or the plague – via domesticated animals abandoned by players for fear of infecting their avatars, leaving the sickened pets to roam freely.

Programmers tried to set up quarantines, but they were ignored.

Finally, they resorted to an option not available in the real world : they shut down the servers and rebooted the system.

"This was the first time that a virtual virus has infected a virtual human being in a manner resembling an actual epidemiological event," said Fefferman, whose co-author, epidemiologist Eric Lofgren from TuftsUniversity in Boston, was playing the game when the plague struck.

The authors had already discussed the possibility of using online gaming to study the spread of disease, and thus immediately recognised the opportunity.

To date, epidemiologists have relied heavily on mathematical simulations to forecast the spread of contagious diseases across large populations.

But crunching numbers has limitations, says Fefferman.

"There is no way to model how people will behave" in a public crisis, she said.

"How many will run away from a quarantine?

"Will they become more or less co-operative if they are scared? We simply don't know."

Which is where the virtual netherworlds come into the picture. They can help scientists to "feed appropriate parameters into existing epidemiological models", she said.

Some sceptics have suggested that gamers are more willing to take risks online than in the flesh, and Fefferman acknowledges there is a difference.

But most players have invested a lot of time and energy into strengthening their avatars and forming alliances.

For many, psychologists say, their virtual creations have become alter egos.

"We don't mean to suggest that people's reactions in this game would exactly mirror their reactions in real life," she said.

"But I think it is the closest thing we have to something that people really do become emotionally invested in protecting."

The researchers are working on a proposal for a new patch that would be a "compromise between what gamers would most enjoy and what would be most scientifically useful," she said.

WORDS:

plague [ pleig ] n. 瘟疫，鼠疫；灾难 vt. 使痛苦，造成麻烦

run amok əˈmɔk (idm 习语 ) 横冲直撞 ; 乱窜

populated by

flesh-and-blood 血肉般的

become testing grounds for

malaria [ m əˈleəriə ] n. 疟疾

as-yet-unknown

under way 在进行中

yield vi. 屈服；倒塌 vt. 产生 ；让出 n. 产量

highly significant

unlikely a. 未必的，不大可能的

dubbed--dub vt. 起绰号，把 … 称为 ；配音，译制片

Byzantine ba ɪˈzntaɪn （建筑）拜占庭式的 , 拜占庭风格的

avatar （印度教中）下凡化作 人形（或兽形）；化身

shrug it off shrug sth off （认为某事物不重要）不予理会

spun out of control--spin v. 旋转；晕眩；纺，织；甩干 n. 旋转

reality n. 现实，实际；真实

densely populated cities

quarantine  [ ˈkwɔrənˌti:n ] n. 隔离

epidemiological

crunch n. 嘎吱嘎吱的声音 vi. 嘎吱嘎吱地咬嚼 ( 响 )

netherworld 阴间

come into the picture 引起人们注意 , 被牵连

parameter [ p əˈræmitə ] n.[ 常 pl.] 界限，范围；参数

sceptics 持怀疑态度的人

mirror n. 镜 vt. 反映，反射，映照

 

 

SENTENCE:

become more heavily integrated in daily life

The unlikely path to a collaboration between hard science and hard-core gaming began in late 2005

Finally, they resorted to an option not available in the real world : they shut down the servers and rebooted the system.

 

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相关听力材料:

60-Second Science Podcast (Scientific American)

Online Game Offers Insights Into Epidemics

A glitch in the World of Warcraft online role-playing game enabled a virtual disease to spread among the characters, which became useful for real epidemiologists to study. Kevin Begos reports.

 

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