SARS WARS is a strategic pandemic management game. Play as the administrative staff of the University of Liège to deal with the contagion of the SARS-CoV2 virus. But beware, your decisions will have consequences!
In SARS WARS, the player must respond to situations of varying difficulty that follow one another endlessly. To do so, he is faced with a binary choice: answer A or answer B. This choice, which has consequences for two gauges, epidemiological and motivational, is made by swiping left or right. To win, it is therefore necessary to balance the two gauges while fighting against the natural evolution of the virus.
The epidemiological and motivational impact of the player's decisions is constructed according to a mathematical algorithm, itself based on research data from an epidemiological model. Therefore, SARS WARS mobilises variables inspired by real life, calculated according to a true scientific methodology.
SARS WARS is a playful project to popularise science and raise awareness of the fight against a pandemic. Built in connection with current events, namely the Covid-19 pandemic, it is the result of a strategic plan developed by the University of Liège through its Risk Assessment Group.
The objective behind SARS WARS is to develop a prototype of a playful device allowing the mobilisation of scientific data for awareness raising purposes, but also potentially for investigation and teaching. Therefore, real data is used to design the game. At the heart of its algorithm is a complex epidemiological model, developed by researchers at the University of Liège and adapted for the game.
The origins of the project date back to the year 2020 when, under the impetus of the rectoral authorities, the Liège Game Lab - a scientific collective centred around research on video games at the University of Liège and coordinated by Prof. Björn-Olav Dozo (Faculty of Philosophy and Letters) - was asked to work on the development of an awareness-raising game on the barrier gestures used to combat the current pandemic development.
Two different game structures are initially proposed, inspired by existing games: Plague Inc. evolved (Miniclip, Ndemic Creations, 2012), an apocalyptic simulation game based on managing the circulation of a virus over several territories; or Reigns (Nerial, Devolver Digital, 2016), a strategic card game asking you to manage a kingdom by responding in a trivial way (A or B) to various situations, while maintaining good relations with four factions. After much thought and prototyping, the Reigns-alike project was finally chosen. The project was then entrusted to the Liège Game Lab for the gameplay and writing part, and to the AR/VR Laboratory of HEC-ULiège, directed by Professor Michael Schyns, for the development part.
Since one of the objectives of the project was to have data, variables and algorithms built based on real scientific facts, several research teams are set up to participate in the development of the game. The COVID-19 platform led by Prof. F. Bureau and Prof. L. Gillet, as well as the GIGA of the ULiège, which is very involved in the fight against the pandemic, are making evolutionary epidemiological data available. The team of Prof. Vincent Denoël (Faculty of Applied Sciences), in collaboration with the Liège Game Lab, oversees adapting the epidemiological model, while Prof. Anne-Marie Etienne and Stéphanie Delroisse (Faculty of Psychology) are participating in the development of an algorithm dealing with motivation. The two models are then combined and included in the game by the development teams.
In September 2021, a prototype of the game is finalised and endorsed by the RAG. This was followed by a submission to student testers from ULiège. Based on the positive results, a first version of the game was published at the beginning of 2022.
Research projectSARS WARS should be considered a research project in many respects. Its development is the result of a scientific method inspired by multidisciplinary research in game sciences on the one hand. The members of the Liège Game Lab worked together to highlight the salient features of a management game, as well as the various game elements that could be adapted and/or diverted to meet the scientific requirements of the project.
In this respect, extensive research was carried out on the generic identity (the characteristic thematic and mechanical elements of a genre) of the strategic card game, i.e., the gameplay and narrative construction: questions, trivial oppositions, coefficients, victory and defeat conditions, symbolic or material reward systems, etc. Particular attention was also paid to the development of games on the telephone: average playing time, duration of a game, interface display, etc.
On the other hand, the various elements included in the game are the result of years of research at the University of Liège, from several disciplines and laboratories: epidemiology, health sciences, behavioural sciences, etc.
In addition to these two points, the involvement of game dynamics in teaching, investigation and research frameworks is an important issue for the ULiège. Indeed, as the video game is a powerful and very popular communication medium, its adaptation into a device used for scientific purposes constitutes a research project. Therefore, determining the different components of SARS WARS, as well as its strengths and limitations, allows us to think about the creation of such devices in future work.
Finally, the development team is entirely composed of researchers from ULiège, coming from all horizons, but having a common interest in video games.
The game was developed on the Unity 3D development platform. It consisted of adapting an epidemiological model into game rules (gameplay), via the adaptation of a MatLab code, a scripted language for numerical calculation purposes, provided by the teams in charge of the model.
SARS WARS is composed of four decks of cards written in three elements: a basic situation requiring resolution, two resolution options (answer A or B) and multipliers associated with each option (a multiplier of the R0 and a multiplier of a motivational gauge). These four decks correspond to four stages of the pandemic: the initial phase (Deck a), the testing phase (Deck b), the vaccination phase (Deck c) and containment (Deck d).
To move from one deck to another, the player must be able to unlock access to it according to several game parameters. These accesses are materialized by special cards: alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, and theta. When the player stumbles upon these cards, he or she is offered the opportunity to move from one deck to another: alpha and beta unlock access to decks b and c; gamma, delta and epsilon return the player to containment (deck d); and theta allows the player to move out of containment (back from d to a, b or c depending on his or her previous position).
To achieve a win situation, the player must reduce the infection gauge (I) while maintaining a good relationship with the individuals in the population, as evidenced by their willingness to follow the measures (motivation gauge M).
The drafting of the cards includes: the application of proportionate or non-proportionate health measures; the organisation or cancellation of events, whether discrete or mass; the communication or not of the authorities on the evolution of the pandemic; the application or not of strict measures such as confinement, the banning of attendance at venues, etc. The development or not of complementary research; the arrival of new variants; dilemmas and other psychological or reasoning situations; questions of knowledge about the functioning of barrier gestures, the circulation of a virus or a vaccine; surprises; etc.
SARS WARS is based on a compartmental epidemiological model. This type of mathematical model implies that a targeted sample (here, the academic population) can be divided into compartments according to its condition. The elements of the sample travel from one compartment to another in a specific direction. For the SARS-CoV2 pandemic, ULiège uses an augmented "SEIR" model (Van Hulle, 2021) which considers the salivary testing campaign implemented by ULiège, but also the application of two doses of vaccine (situation in force at the time) and the circulation of individuals with the outside world (compartments coloured red).
This model, due to the large amount of data to be included in the algorithm that must manage the state of the pandemic in the game, has been simplified to build a trivial SEIR. The latter excludes too much backtracking from one compartment to another as soon as the vaccine is inoculated, reduced to one dose. Furthermore, the involvement of a compartment composed of individuals from outside the community (home, public transport, etc.) was reduced: the model operates in an almost hermetically sealed environment, where the individuals making up the population (25,000) circulate almost exclusively within the campus.
Once stripped of too complex data, the set contains the following parameters and indicators: max. of infections due to the external situation at the ULiège, automatically decreasing; time to cure/quarantine; loss of natural immunity; effectiveness of immunity; fraction of the population developing symptoms; return after false positive; time to develop symptoms; sensitivity and specificity of tests, frequency of screening; rate of participation in screening (from deck b); number of daily vaccinations (from deck c); and fraction of the population infected at the initial time.
A multiplier of less than or greater than 1 is applied to the initial R0 for each response, depending on the situation faced by the player. These multipliers range from x 0.75 to x 1.2 (within limits considered "reasonable" or scientifically plausible). The higher the multiplier, the higher the R0 and the higher the infections (infection gauge = I). Conversely, a multiplier lower than 1 will reduce the R0, which in the long run and depending on the evolution of the R0, may decrease the infection curve.
In contrast to the epidemiological model, which predicts the evolution of the pandemic based on the actions of the player, it is impossible to create a complex motivational algorithm with the same ambitions. This is because the workings of social psychology and health psychology are fundamentally different, not least because of a multitude of constantly changing factors.
To simplify the logical reasoning of the player and the construction of the gameplay of SARS WARS, it was decided that the motivation would be materialized in the writing of the questions asked to the player. From then on, the writing was done according to several markers, representing several complementary or even related disciplines or research objects.
On the one hand, the inspiration of an initial modelling based on interactions between individuals makes it possible to treat human behaviour under the prism of social components. By referring to social psychology, the game addresses issues such as reticular interactions, socio-professional profile, social pressure or proxemics. On the other hand, the inspiration of micro research, close to health sciences, questions the player as an actor of the pandemic by addressing personal dimensions: causal attributions; belief systems; motivation and sensitivity; severity, vulnerability, and threat; or cost/benefit ratio.
Mechanically, each response A or B proposed to the player performs a mathematical operation of the type of addition or subtraction to a gauge (motivation = M) whose maximum value is 100. Depending on the initial situation, the deck membership (deck d relating to containment) or the nature of the responses, a subtraction or addition of a value of 5 or 10 is performed. In addition, some situations have no impact on the gauge.
The individuals (25,000) of a given population (the ULiège academic community, including administrative, technical, and working staff, professors and researchers, students and rectoral authorities) circulate from one compartment to another according to their state (uninfected, asymptomatic, recovered, vaccinated, false positive, true positive and symptomatic). This circulation is achieved according to the player's choices, which apply a multiplier to a naturally high R0 (basic reproduction rate of a virus) at the beginning of the game, as well as an addition or subtraction to a gauge specific to the population's motivation.
The player navigates from deck to deck (a, b, c and d) according to choices made during the game (launch the testing? develop the vaccine? confine?). With each card:
Despite the rigour of the methodologies used to make SARS WARS a game inspired by concrete, theorised and observed dynamics, any video game remains an allegorical construction: the video game medium, while it can call upon relevant scientific reflections, is formed around a central playful dimension. The construction of the gameplay is essential to its functioning, and many elementary scientific reflections have been abandoned, or put aside, to avoid any conflict with the game's ludic identity (strategy, card games, mobile time, etc.).
In other words, and given its playful nature, SARS WARS cannot be a fully-fledged research tool or mathematical simulation that can be mobilised for specific studies as is. On the contrary, a tool like this requires contextualisation, support, and the production of a discourse. Therefore, the results of the game, although the product of a scientific method, cannot be considered as faithful to reality.
L'utilisation du jeu n’implique aucune collecte de donnée à caractère personnel sur votre smartphone. Cependant, quelques statistiques de jeu (question posée, réponse, score) seront collectées et associées à un identifiant généré aléatoirement (pseudonymisation). Ces données seront, sauf opposition de votre part, transmises à l’Université de Liège.
Le responsable du traitement de ces données est l’Université de Liège, dont le siège est situé Place du 20-Août, 7, 4000 Liège et est représentée par son Recteur. Ces données seront conservées maximum cinq ans le temps de réaliser une recherche sur les trajectoires de jeu; en vue d'une publication scientifique. Ces données pseudonymisées seront traitées sur la base :
Many people were involved in the creation of SARS WARS.