By Erin Bynum
Konstantin Mitgutsch and Narda Alvarado define serious games as games that aim to fulfill a purpose beyond entertainment—games that convey values and influence how players perceive the world around them. They provide a framework for serious game design assessment (SGDA) that allows designers to understand the values of game elements and whether or not a game’s message is coherent across different elements. These include elements such as content and information, mechanics and gameplay, fiction and narrative, aesthetics and graphics, and framing.
Source: Ndemic Creations
Played as a serious game, Ndemic Creations’ Plague Inc. effectively incorporates these elements to underscore its purpose as a game designed to inform players about disease transmission and pandemic culture. Plague Inc. is a single-player video game in which the player takes on the role of a disease and attempts to infect and eliminate the entire global population. The player chooses a country of origin for their disease and then accumulates DNA points as more people become infected with the disease. This central mechanic allows players to upgrade their disease with mutations, such as the ability to infect animals or survive in chemically treated water. All of these mutations, in turn, allow the disease to spread more quickly. The game’s goal is to wipe out the entire global population before a cure is created.
Source: Steam
Many components of the game fall into the SGDA framework and allow the game to influence how players think about disease outbreaks. Throughout the game, the player receives news updates that inform them of disease spread and detection, whether scientists are researching a cure, and other factors. These updates simulate the kind of news that the public would see during an outbreak, enforcing the purpose of the game as a teaching tool. While Plague Inc. was created before the Covid-19 pandemic, many of the news updates cover topics familiar to those in a post-pandemic world: vaccine status updates, the detection of the disease in a new nation, increases or decreases in the number of people infected, etc. In our contemporary context, many of the updates feel realistic and fulfill their purpose of familiarizing players with the details of pandemic culture.
Source: Steam
Plague Inc. also utilizes game mechanics to inform players about the process of disease spread, mutation, and elimination. As the disease spreads in the game, the player is awarded DNA points, which they can then use to purchase new mutations for the disease. Although some mutations occur naturally—such as acclimation to hot, humid climates—others must be earned and purchased. These mutations help players overcome obstacles in the game and engage with factors such as climate discrepancies, lack of fast transmission, or research progress toward a cure. Both the rewards and obstacles explicitly communicate the game’s purpose of inspiring players to think more deeply about the process through which outbreaks occur and eventually diminish. Game mechanics play a crucial role as players face choices and develop strategies, learning more about outbreaks in the process. Different choices such as the origin of the disease, how it mutates, and the sequence of its mutation combine to impact the “success” of the disease and thus the player’s success in the game. This association of the player’s success with the success of a pandemic’s spread has a curious emotional effect. It essentially deprives the player of any opportunity to make an emotional connection within the game. Instead, the player is invited to focus on developing a calculated process for encouraging disease spread, which fosters a better scientific understanding of how pandemics begin and spread.
In addition to its mechanics, the game’s point of view also influences the experience and its message. Essentially, the player plays from the point of view of the disease, not human beings. This unexpected perspective configures the player’s goal in a way that underscores the game’s purpose as a pedagogical tool. It prohibits the opportunity for players to become attached to characters, material items, or storylines within the game; indeed, even the game’s aesthetics, graphics, and visual design are functional and informative, rather than emotional. Gameplay occurs on a map. The spread of disease is demonstrated by the spread of red blotches, as well as the progress bar at the bottom of the screen. Instead of experiencing the human effects on the disease, the player experiences a visual representation of the disease’s growth and impact. This eliminates the emotional and humanitarian aspect of the game and encourages the player to contemplate the terrifying possibilities of disease outbreak without forcing them to imagine themselves or their loved ones in such a scenario—a situation that feels strangely out of sync in our post-pandemic world.
Source: Steam
Overall, the game feels realistic in its quantified approach to outbreak and disease mutations. Furthermore, the game’s straightforward visual style provides you with a simple but accurate depiction of how diseases spread, while preventing them from becoming too emotionally involved in the game. This can be seen as a strength or a weakness, depending on one’s perspective, but it succeeds in keeping the player focused about the science and statistics involved with pandemics. The game’s clever use of mobile notifications also advances its mission to teach players about disease spread, allowing them to experience the growth of a pandemic in real time and in real spaces. With many elements of a serious game, Plague Inc. efficiently communicates its purpose and advances our knowledge about how diseases spread.
References
Mitchell, S., & Hamilton, S. N. (2017). Playing at apocalypse: Reading plague inc. in pandemic culture. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 24(6), 587–606. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856516687235
Mitgutsch, K., & Alvarado, N. (2012, May). Purposeful by Design? A Serious Game Design Assessment Framework. https://dspace.mit.edu/. Retrieved August 30, 2021, from https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/100701/Purposeful%20by%20design.pdf?sequence=1.
Vaughan, James. (2012). Plague Inc. (iOS and Android versions). Ndemic Creations.