(no subject)

[camwyn]

Some time ago, Android Market started recommending a game called Plague, Inc. for me. I ignored it for a while, but last week finally checked it out. It seems to be a Pandemic clone (I say 'seems' because I've never actually played Pandemic). You get to start in the country of your choice, and you have to evolve your plague with the traits you want- vector of transmission, symptoms, environmental tolerances, etc.- but you're limited by the number of 'DNA Points' you get from infecting more countries, spreading to more people, and so on. The more disturbing your disease's symptoms and the more people it kills, the more likely the humans are to concentrate on cure research and distribution. There are three difficulty levels; on Casual, nobody washes their hands, research doctors don't work, and sick people are given hugs. On Normal, 2/3 of the population washes their hands, doctors work three days a week, and sick people are ignored socially. On Brutal, the world's population has a case of compulsive hand washing, doctors never go home, and sick people are locked in prison rather than allowed to circulate. You start off working with a bacterium and you unlock other types of disease organism by playing and winning more, along with unlocking other genetic traits that can improve your disease's performance (either that or you pay extra for these unlocks).

I wiped out everybody on Earth except for a few thousand people in Canada, New Zealand, and I think Finland and Central America with my second disease, and I destroyed all human life on Earth with disease #3. I upped the difficulty to Normal and played as a virus instead of a bacterium for disease #4 and wiped out humanity in half the time.

I'm... not really sure I want to play this thing again. It's fascinating, but I don't think I need to play it any more.

Comments

[vivien]

Step away from destroying humanity, Cam. Step away. :)

[camwyn]

Yeah, I think I've had about enough of that for now, even if my virus' success did unlock the ability to use a fungal disease on a new playthrough. It's the part where the message pops up when you're about half a million people from the end, saying that "the human race is doomed, the last few survivors know they are witnessing the end of history" that unnerved me enough to shut the game down.

[vivien]

That's pretty damn unnerving, yeah!

[thebattycakes]

That sounds interesting, in a super morbid way. I could see playing it gleefully for a bit, then having a bad case of conscience afterwards. Or a huge sack of the heebie jeebies.

It's like Warcraft II way back when on the Playstation when it was a RTS game. I'd build up a huge kingdom, wiping out all comers, then would cackle while slaying my own peons that built it. I'd feel bad about it after awhile, but damn was it fun/funny to do.

Wiping out the whole world though...

[camwyn]

I have absolutely no guilt about world conquest in Civilization IV even when it involves culturally overwhelming your neighbors and/or completely replacing the culture of your conquered people with your own. I'm kind of perversely pleased with that, but then I always favored the original White Horseman of the Apocalypse, who was not Pestilence but Conquest. With the 'end of history' line I mentioned, it gets creepy.

Oh, and even better, you can cause an implied unbelievable borking of world ecology. If one of your disease vectors is birds? Countries will do everything in their power to eradicate first pigeons, then all birds. Or at least I think it's in that order- I know if you check one screen it says 'X country is exterminating pigeons' but if you watch the news crawl on the main screen it says 'X country has eradicated all birds'. So you can indirectly destroy a MASSIVE segment of the planet's ecology in addition to wiping out humans.

[thebattycakes]

Conquest is one thing, it's awesome to be the KING OF EVERYTHING! Decimation is when it gets a little iffy. Fun, but yeah, that 'end of history' line there is unnerving.

The killing all pigeons/birds thing amuses me, though. And yeah, okay, wiping out the human race sounds fun, too.

[silveraspen]

... I think I'm glad you're not a bench science researcher. :)

[camwyn]

It's probably for the best, yes. Especially given that I generally did my best to map these diseases to real-world ones in terms of symptom constellations and means of transmission, at least at first.

I'm still surprised that the virus I started in Papua New Guinea took off as rapidly as it did, considering that in the game New Guinea has no land borders and no airport, so the only way the disease can get out of the country is by boat. At least the plagues I started in India and Saudi Arabia had the advantage of starting in countries with land borders for people to cross and both an airport and a seaport. (Countries chosen largely for real-world massive gatherings that would provide perfect means of spreading a disease to as many corners of the globe as possible, even though that's not taken into account in-game.)

[bjornwilde]

Mordin or BLU Medic need to play it in bar.... /enable

[leeshajoy]

You might consider Infectionator, which has you unleashing a zombie plague on various urban centers throughout the world. The presentation is cute and silly enough that it's hard to get all that morbid about it.