posted: February 18, 2008

Here is a piece I recently did for the UTNE READER. It was a great article on how the online gaming community is being studied by scientists to see how people behave in a real world pandemic outbreak. They sited a recent "outbreak" in a popular online "dungeons and dragons type" game. Within the game, once the outbreak started, some people tried to help others, some fled (spreading the plague rapidly), and some sat back to watch what happened. The scientists say that this is a more accurate way to predict human behavior in a real outbreak, rather than relying too heavily on mathematical predictions. If the players actually have something to lose, their behavior becomes more authentic. The article kept referring to a more accurate portrait of the gamer.