Playing Pandemic: Infectious Diseases in Games

Merle and Lee consider games that feature infectious diseases in multiple media. After a brief overview of types of games and references to games that feature infectious diseases as part of their plot, the conversation focuses on two popular and successful, yet very different pandemic games where the infectious disease pandemic is central to the game: Pandemic and Plague Inc. Pandemic is a cooperative board game in which players have to quickly find cures for a few threatening diseases while avoiding too many disease outbreaks around the world. Plague Inc is a single player video game (also an app) in which players are supposed to infect the entire world and kill all the humans in it.