The Pathology of Plague Inc.
Or how I learned to stop worrying and love Plague Inc.
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Or how I learned to stop worrying and love Plague Inc.
Read Full Article
The Pathology of Plague Inc.
- Thread starter Robert Rath
- Start date
I feel like by the time the lack of genetic diversity proves to be a real problem, we'll have mastered the genome and will be able to purge genetic diseases.DrThodt said:
OT: I was going to point out how suspiciously this game looks like Pandemic II, but it appears that that controversy ship has sailed. http://www.modojo.com/news/plague_inc_creator_denies_accusation_of_being_pandemic_25_ripoff is my source, though they didn't mention that Pandemic II came out YEARS ago as a flash game on Kongregate (I think) and that the real similarities are between Plague Inc. and that game.
That said, it's entirely possible that the UI and mechanics are the only similar things, and that Plague Inc. uses better, more thoroughly-researched algorithms that don't have the entire world shutting down its airports because of your *coughing* plague.
Awesome piece Mr. Rath. I enjoy your articles here so much it's getting fanboyish.
As a biologist I love these portrayals. It's like the movie Contagion. The script was so real, so unsympathetic of its characters, so unmiraculous, that it did feel like the a fine representation of what would happen in real life. The disease doesn't care who you are, you are always at risk and tons of people will die. I haven't played Plague, Inc., so I don't know if it incorporates riots, famine, and other humanity crippling events into the simulation. Does it do that, or is death only dependent on infection?
As a biologist I love these portrayals. It's like the movie Contagion. The script was so real, so unsympathetic of its characters, so unmiraculous, that it did feel like the a fine representation of what would happen in real life. The disease doesn't care who you are, you are always at risk and tons of people will die. I haven't played Plague, Inc., so I don't know if it incorporates riots, famine, and other humanity crippling events into the simulation. Does it do that, or is death only dependent on infection?
For me, it tends to be Greenland - really sparse population and hostile environment, coupled with really occasional ship access from only a couple of North European countries... It's almost always the stumbling block holding back the end-game slaughter, I find!valium said:
This is the one bit I would have liked to see them do a bit more with this game - a country only drops out when EVERY living sole in it is dead, and the government "collapses". There's an in-game message where the US President gets infected and dies, but beyond that there's very little visible response to your spread, bar things like the mentioned WHO mechanics, such as closing ports and distributing face masks or bottled water. Mass panicked emigrations would be cool, as would death toll from rioting, vigilante attacks, international conflict (trying to eradicate the population of a neighbouring infected country, perhaps) etc.shiajun said:
One nice touch is executions of infected; especially on Brutal difficulty, countries will occasionally round up and execute a chunk of their infected or, if the numbers are getting high, I've seen cities bombed in a bid to stop me. Can make it a bit nail biting when the last, isolated country in the harshest environment executed 90% of the infected, and you have to quickly get rid of your more lethal mutations so you don't burn yourself out!
It's a nice little game, but I'm a bit sad that there's a whole cluster of intriguing disease types behind £1.40 each, when the actual game's less than half that
The most fun thing to do is maximize infection rate without having any symptoms. Once everyone in the world has it, turn on all the lethal ones.
Entire global population has heart attack all at the exact same time.
Entire global population has heart attack all at the exact same time.
this is very true. in my experience with plague inc. Greenland is a huge jerk.Wicky_42 said:
i even remember one time i was playing and i think i had over 60% of the world infected, and maybe 5000 in Greenland, and then Greenland was like NOPE! and actually killed off all of their infected peoples. i was shocked
Reading this I can't help but see a massive IP that could spawn dozens of games. A good one could be playing the game in reverse; you play as a WHO agent trying to wipe out a recently discovered disease before everyone dies. An interesting part of the game could be putting it online; rather than play a random virus you play against a human designed plague. Two options that I could think of:
1. After you wipe out humanity you can upload your game to the network, just a list of what you did and when. Someone playing defence mode can play against your virus and try and stop it. They control all the measures that you see the game use (port closures, culls, etc.) and try to save humanity.
2. Real time 1v1 (literal) deathmatch between a player controlling a plague and someone controlling the response team. No idea what the other player is going to do so it turns into almost a game of chess, moving things around and anticipating what the other guy is gonna do.
Then there's the usual survival/post-apocalypse RPG/RTS where you play as a survivor of the plague (an interesting idea would be having you start in an area where an uploaded playthrough failed to kill everyone in the original game, giving different starting conditions based on where survived) and you have rebuild society, dealing with all the dead and the destruction caused during the plague. Every so often you could run into a new mutation of the plague and have to research a new cure, or have the option in game of stopping vaccinations (much like we don't vaccinate for smallpox any more) saving money but running the risk of a resurgence.
Quite a lot possible from the games original premise.
OT: Great article as always Robert.
1. After you wipe out humanity you can upload your game to the network, just a list of what you did and when. Someone playing defence mode can play against your virus and try and stop it. They control all the measures that you see the game use (port closures, culls, etc.) and try to save humanity.
2. Real time 1v1 (literal) deathmatch between a player controlling a plague and someone controlling the response team. No idea what the other player is going to do so it turns into almost a game of chess, moving things around and anticipating what the other guy is gonna do.
Then there's the usual survival/post-apocalypse RPG/RTS where you play as a survivor of the plague (an interesting idea would be having you start in an area where an uploaded playthrough failed to kill everyone in the original game, giving different starting conditions based on where survived) and you have rebuild society, dealing with all the dead and the destruction caused during the plague. Every so often you could run into a new mutation of the plague and have to research a new cure, or have the option in game of stopping vaccinations (much like we don't vaccinate for smallpox any more) saving money but running the risk of a resurgence.
Quite a lot possible from the games original premise.
OT: Great article as always Robert.
I'm Canadian and oddly enough my first successful disease, Love, conquered Canada last. Everything was solid red except Canada... so odd.valium said:
Good article, though I still prefer Pandemic 2. It's just more satisfying.
I'm also getting a bit sick of this growing trend where earlier, sometimes better versions of games appear on the internet, but the one that gets famous is the watered down mobile version. The one that bugs me the most is that Angry Birds has become such a ridiculously huge phenomenon, when flash game sites had versions of the same game that are a THOUSAND times more interesting and complex completely free.
Still, interesting stuff about plagues and whatnot. You should do an article on DEFCON. Fascinating game.
The other thing I love doing is when the world is basically destroyed and the message about the last few humans dying in holes pops up, sell all my lethal upgrades just as there's a dozen or so humans left. Then slowly killing them with horrific combinations of rashes, blindness and diarrhea, imagining as their hopes rise that they are getting better, then sink as the symptoms return. The the tiny group then bands together, huddled amongst destroyed buildings and mountains of human corpses, watching as the terrible disease picks off their companions 1 by 1. The final survivor feels the blindness becoming stronger, as their vision goes dark. Staring across the seas of rotting bodies, before collapsing, insane, blind and completely alone, contemplating humanity's final moment as a species, before the excruciating suffering takes over and claims their life as they die of vomit induced dehydration and organ failure.
I'm also getting a bit sick of this growing trend where earlier, sometimes better versions of games appear on the internet, but the one that gets famous is the watered down mobile version. The one that bugs me the most is that Angry Birds has become such a ridiculously huge phenomenon, when flash game sites had versions of the same game that are a THOUSAND times more interesting and complex completely free.
Still, interesting stuff about plagues and whatnot. You should do an article on DEFCON. Fascinating game.
Oh god I love doing that. My favorite is to go for the brain upgrades and make the entire human race go insane AND blind simultaneously.DragonStorm247 said:
The other thing I love doing is when the world is basically destroyed and the message about the last few humans dying in holes pops up, sell all my lethal upgrades just as there's a dozen or so humans left. Then slowly killing them with horrific combinations of rashes, blindness and diarrhea, imagining as their hopes rise that they are getting better, then sink as the symptoms return. The the tiny group then bands together, huddled amongst destroyed buildings and mountains of human corpses, watching as the terrible disease picks off their companions 1 by 1. The final survivor feels the blindness becoming stronger, as their vision goes dark. Staring across the seas of rotting bodies, before collapsing, insane, blind and completely alone, contemplating humanity's final moment as a species, before the excruciating suffering takes over and claims their life as they die of vomit induced dehydration and organ failure.
Everytime I see people praising the game Plague Inc I can't help but think that its just a massive rip off of Pandemic - a flash game by DarkRealmStudios that was made all the way back in 2009. The gameplay is exactly the same as far as I can tell.
Unless I'm completely misguided and that DarkRealms is the same dev as Ndemic Creations or that Ndemic actually made a version of the game first I'll continue to feel bitter at Plague Inc's commercial success.
Unless I'm completely misguided and that DarkRealms is the same dev as Ndemic Creations or that Ndemic actually made a version of the game first I'll continue to feel bitter at Plague Inc's commercial success.
It does seem to copy Pandemic, but it's a little bit better than Pandemic as well. However, I feel it's a bit silly that onc eth ecure is created, everywhere around the world gets it immediately (rather than, say, rich countries first), the ability of a small, poor country to go into complete lockdown and not let anything near it is spectacular compared to real life (where animals would be much harder to stop and people would be going in droves from infected coutries to healthy ones and spreading the disease), and lastly, most mind-boggling of all, you counter safeguards on planes and ships by evolving the associated transmission, which I find counterintuitive. If ships were cleaned better, wouldn't that make a water-based plague worse off...?
EDIT: Oh and the other thing is, the events are really few and unimaginative. Almost every time the Olympics infects Britain, whether or not they're already infected, and if the game needs an excuse for cysts to be more effective, just any fucking country - and I've seen this happen in Afghanistan - holds a 'Festival of Love', which is rarely appropriate.
EDIT 2: And an anecdote, I normally name my diseases something serious, like Syrax or Verdew, but for some reason as soon as I name a disease 'Weed' it gets the high score. It's still there to this day, with 'Communism' not far behind, spoiling my sensible leaderboard.
EDIT: Oh and the other thing is, the events are really few and unimaginative. Almost every time the Olympics infects Britain, whether or not they're already infected, and if the game needs an excuse for cysts to be more effective, just any fucking country - and I've seen this happen in Afghanistan - holds a 'Festival of Love', which is rarely appropriate.
EDIT 2: And an anecdote, I normally name my diseases something serious, like Syrax or Verdew, but for some reason as soon as I name a disease 'Weed' it gets the high score. It's still there to this day, with 'Communism' not far behind, spoiling my sensible leaderboard.
I love doing that!DragonStorm247 said:
Anybody know when the next plague type is supposed to come out?
Funny, I just got this on my phone and have been playing it off and on during coffee breaks at work. It seems for once I got a game before hearing about it here. o.o
Thankfully I already knew that the plagues I'm unleashing would have a lot harder of a time trying to kill everyone here in the real world. Otherwise I might have just gone full germaphobe.
Thankfully I already knew that the plagues I'm unleashing would have a lot harder of a time trying to kill everyone here in the real world. Otherwise I might have just gone full germaphobe.
Trouble is, I always end up failing to kill anyone when I do that, as once a critical mass of people are infected you stop getting evolution points from infections, and only get them from pop-ups and deaths... leave it too long and although everyone's feeling like crap, no-one's really dying as they casually knock up a cure whilst you're scrabbling for enough dna to stop their hearts!DragonStorm247 said:
Meh, I found Plague Inc. to be much much better than Pandemic myself. The graphical interface is far better, the statistics tracker is far better, the actual spread of diseases feels better, and the actual game part feels better. People can not die to anythin nonplague related in Pandemic, whereas I've actually had deaths from things like riots in Plague Inc.yamy said:
But once everyone's infected, you can just sell all of your spreading traits, then use them to buy more symptoms. For maximum cheapness, sell the low end symptom prereqs as well.Wicky_42 said: