Very cool research possibilities online

When reading the Lofgren/Fefferman article about the virus outbreak 'Corrupted Blood' in WOW, I kept thinking to myself 'this is SO. COOL.' I don't play WOW, it requires way more time and attention than I can afford right now, so my feelings on the article and the possible research projects that could be done within WOW are probably very different from a player who has a lot of time and money invested in their character. 

That aside, the research possibilities that are discussed in this article are really really interesting. We can speculate and make informed guesses on how outbreaks (from viral to zombie) might spread throughout the world, but using detailed and "real" digital worlds would really make the hard-to-measure human factor that much easier to map. 

Fefferman did a follow-up article with a different collaborator, Kafai, (available here: http://rci.rutgers.edu/~feffermn/YK-NF-JVWR.pdf), in which they studied another digital epidemic (called Whypox) in a gaming world called Whyville - this one with much younger players than WOW.  They also propose that these virtual environments could be used as great tools for student learning about the spread of disease and how to halt it. I've never taken a course in epidemiology, but I think this type of research is fascinating, and as someone who occasionally worries about the potential zombie apocalypse, I would find these simulations really interesting to read about. I've got the Fefferman labs bookmarked now.