Pandemic sense can’t be assumed
Just because you’re being sensible about Covid, don’t expect that others will do the same, says
OVER the years, I’ve worked for and with a number of companies, as well as volunteering time with them.
The one I wish to talk about is a major game vendor who at the peak of their success had tens of millions of players for a single game.
This was back in the dialup internet days when such numbers were unheard of. The game was Massive Multiplayer Online, thousands of people played on a copy of the world. Such games are commonplace now, but back then it was practically the only one in existence.
One computer would run a number of copies of the world, and players would be separated into groups of tens of thousands on one world. The players roamed their version of the world solo or teamed up with others to complete goals.
Sometimes these players would gather in groups of five or 40 to enter Dungeons, where special sets of rules applied there and there alone.
In one of its more famous incidents, this game had a major bug. This bug led to a “spell” that should have only infected players inside the dungeon escaping into not just the world, but other worlds that were hosted on the same computer hardware. Not long after, it was reported that some epidemiologists had looked at this incident, known as “Corrupted Blood Outbreak” after the disease spell, to start looking at how computer simulations could be used to track outbreaks in the real world.
At the time, I was active in the programming community surrounding the game. My interest was in virtual markets. However, at the pending release of a zombie-themed expansion pack, I expressed my feelings on the games’ previous implementation of a zombie plague.
It had only taken place in very small areas of the game world and did not lead to what would likely happen in a real-world scenario.
I implored the game programmers to perform a zombie outbreak of some description to be the lead-in story for the new expansion pack. I forgot about this conversation until a few months later when the event started. People lost their absolute minds.
The in-game effect of what became known as “The Great Zombie Infestation of ’08” was that when players opened specific boxes of unknown origins, they would become infected with a zombie virus. They could then go and infect other players.
Players from opposing factions could talk to each
other in “Zombie”, when normally they wouldn’t be able to. There was an immense challenge in attempting to achieve game results without becoming infected. I soon learned to not log into the game at peak hours, and instead play only during the quiet time if I wanted to achieve anything significant.
The real-world effect astonished me. Even though the event was only going to last for one week, many players expressed how “their” game had been ruined.
There was a cavalcade of complaints from players that their lives had been ruined.
I still work in IT and use this story frequently to talk with clients about how to deal with network malware and break-ins. Sure, you’re sensible but don’t expect everyone else to act similarly.
This is why I’m not surprised that, despite requesting a full Health System response to nCov19 since before schools returned this year, there are no basic hygiene products at pharmacists in North Hobart.
Hobart’s Peter Lawler has consulted and worked with local, national, and international internet, gaming, and gambling companies on risk and probability since 1992. He was one of the first Twitter users to use the platform to discuss Tasmanian politics. His consulting business is known as “sysrq associates”.