Hello Ailing Acolytes!
It’s been a busy week here at Office Zero as we’re working hard on bringing new content to Rebel Inc. in a bumper 1.3 update (coming very soon) - but we wanted to let you know about some more exciting Plague Inc. developments.
You may have noticed Plague Inc. popping up in your Twitter feeds recently as some enterprising players began a petition to bring anti-vaxxers to the game. the Science Denial scenario we released last year touched on anti-vaxxers (along with flat earthers and climate change deniers). But recent news makes the whole issue even more important, so we threw out the gauntlet and tweeted that if the petition reached 10,000 signatures then we would add a new anti-vaxxer scenario to the game.
And within just a few days… well…
Signature count at time of writing: click here for current petition
So, yeah - we’re going to make some anti-vaxxer content for Plague Inc! It's great to see so many people sticking up for science!
We're currently working out how Anti-Vaxxers will actually work in the game. We have a few ideas that we're trying out and running them through our algorithms. (The biggest challenge is that if everyone in Plague Inc.'s global simulation suddenly stopped getting vaccinated then it would be a very easy game to win!)
It's amazing that six years after the game was released there is still such a huge and passionate community for Plague Inc. It means a lot to us and it makes it a lot of fun to keep working on new updates like this!
On a more important note: disease is (one of) the big threats that humanity as a whole faces. There are enough concerning trends (e.g. antibiotic resistance) without us also making it easier for horrific diseases of the past to come back. People take our modern healthcare for granted and it's almost impossible for anyone to imagine what the world would be like if everyone routinely got measles. If adding something to the game helps some people understand the importance of vaccinations then it will be worth it.
Stay healthy,
James and the Ndemic Creations team
PS.
It looks like lots of folks in the media have picked up on the story too! :)
The Daily Mail
Polygon
Eurogamer
PC Gamer
Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Science Alert
Kotaku
Unilad
Game Informer
Engadget
Destructoid