Liz Losh mentions and critiques a new Facebook app called Patient Zero, from VisualDXHealth. It takes the concept of viral spread literally rather than figuratively, allowing users to create a new virus, "power it up," and spread it to friends. Seems like a decent idea at first blush.

The problem, as Liz points out, is the implementation. Viruses are created, and immunities are granted, by answering quiz questions, no doubt a hat-tip to some idiot stakeholder at the sponsor who wanted to assure "knowledge transfer" by bludgeoning people with textbook learning.

Despite the whole ideavirus metaphor, representations of actual infective viruses just don't work well on Facebook. All the privacy and permissions requirements make the unexpected nature of disease hard to accomplish. Just imagine if the real seasonal flu virus asked your permission before infecting you. Disease management would be a much simpler problem indeed. By contrast, the best examples of in-game disease have been either unexpected (like the corrupted blood plague in World of Warcraft), or intentionally designed to be unexpected (like the CDC's simulated flu virus in Whyville). In both these cases, the virus had properties that made it work.

• It was something players were susceptible to just by virtue of playing
• Contracting the virus was not an obvious process that could be segmented from the rest of play
• The virus had actual negative effects on the larger environment, such that contracting it had meaning
• Methods for avoiding, preventing, or healing the contracted "illness" required an actual compromise in the use of the environment

The same reasons explain why computer viruses work more like real ones. It might be impossible to simulate a virus in Facebook just because of the way the platform limits your contact with other users. Certainly you can't expect people to opt-in for a virus app and then experience anything even remotely meaningful from it. A top-ten app creator might be able to insert the feature into one of their products, but such an act seems unlikely. I guess we could say, slyly, that any app which produces compulsion (say, Pack Rat) simulates the disruptive power of viruses far more than Patient Zero.

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