New game released to understand how social networks and decision making change disease spread

January 2025: Researchers from School of Biological Sciences have collaborated with Game Developers 'Then Try This' to create 'Nergal' - a game designed help understand how people's social networks and decision-making, change how diseases spread through communities.

Nergal
Nergal home screen

Studying disease spread through gaming

Dr Matt Silk is a Royal Society fellow based in the Institute of Ecology and Evolution in the School of Biological Sciences.  

His research focuses on the role of the social behaviour and demography of host populations in host-pathogen dynamics.

From a research perspective the aim is to collect data on how social behaviour may change in response to infectious disease, and how this affects social networks. Studying how behaviour changes in response to disease is really difficult in real-world settings as you need real-time data on infection and behaviour, which is very challenging to collect and (in humans at least) raises considerable ethical challenges.

Previous models for how these behavioural responses affect social network structure have typically assumed that everyone is the same and everyone is rational in their decision-making. 

Researchers are collecting the data to have an idea of how individuals may vary in their behavioural responses. They can then plug these responses into models of infectious diseases spreading through networks, to see how incorporating these realistic patterns of behaviour change might impact epidemic outcomes.

Our scientific aim is to learn more about what happens to disease spread if people differ in how they respond to the threat of getting sick. We hope the game gets people thinking about social networks and disease spread.

The Nergal characters

The life of a Nergal

Describing the game, Then Try This write:

'In this game, you play as a cute Nergal in your choice of fancy hat. You can potter around a strange world, there's no right or wrong, you can do whatever you like - chat with other Nergals (maybe get a snack from them), make and break friendships, talk to the plants, clouds, even the moon if you like, and play tunes by walking around. 

There is an ominous disease though...

While it might not seem like you're doing anything serious, just by playing you're generating important data for disease research, that could lead to important public health benefits in future'.

It's always a challenge making sure these games gather really robust data and are scientifically sound behind the scenes, while also being genuinely fun to play and lovely environments for people to be in. Sadly a lot of science games miss out on one or both of those things.

Screenshot from Nergal game

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