This Second Life avatar looks healthy--so far.
CREDIT: LINDEN RESEARCH INC. |
Do you have an alter ego in Second Life, the booming virtual world? Watch out: Your double may catch a nasty virus someday. Scientists say introducing infectious diseases into online games could help them study epidemics.
The idea comes from Ran Balicer of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Be'er Sheva, Israel, who was inspired by a plague that swept through the online fantasy game World of Warcraft in 2005. To spice things up, game administrators introduced an infectious disease called "corrupted blood." It spread much faster than anticipated, in part because administrators had made virtual "pets" act as reservoirs.
In the future, epidemiologists could work with the administrators of other games to release infectious agents--carefully choosing factors such as mode of transmission, symptoms, and possible treatments--to investigate how diseases spread and how they can be controlled, Balicer wrote in the March issue of Epidemiology. Second Life, in which millions of people chat, work, trade, play, and socialize, would be a great testing ground, he says, because it's much more like the real world than is World of Warcraft.
Harvard University disease modeler John Brownstein says the research committee of the International Society for Disease Surveillance held a long discussion about the paper recently and wants to explore the idea. Epidemics in online games would involve decision-making by thousands or millions of real people, Brownstein says, which "adds a level of authenticity that doesn't exist in other simulations."
