Global Courant 2023-05-14 01:40:12
A new project challenges video game players to try and experience their favorite worlds with an added difficulty: Long COVID.
What if your Minecraft character keeps dropping items due to weak memory? What if your avatar in Elden Ring had trouble firing an arrow at the target or getting up after a rest?
These are some of the effects found in ‘Long COVID mode’a mod pack for Elden Ring, Minecraft, and The Witcher 3 created by a Europe-based advocacy group for long-term COVID patients.
The mods cause the video game avatars to experience setbacks and symptoms in the games mimicking real long COVID symptoms.
“As gaming has become the most popular form of entertainment and has overtaken film and TV, there is no better way to really show the impact of Long COVID than to beat Elden Ring, game of the year and notoriously difficult, while you the same “suffers” symptoms in-game,” Perri Karyal, a popular Elden Ring Twitch streamer, said in a press release. “I think this is such a poignant demonstration of the real issues people face, and a great way to spread the word.”
A trailer for the project shows a glimpse of how the symptoms manifest as in-game hurdleswith wobbly screens, Minecraft players losing their hearts as “you’re out of breath” warnings flash and the titular Witcher is plagued by a banner of “brain fog” that momentarily turns the environment white.
Designers hope to give players a glimpse of what it’s like to have long COVID.
“The challenges of Lung COVID and other invisible post-acute infection syndromes like ME/CFS forced us to find new ways to show people without this experience what it really feels like to live with such a debilitating condition,” says Ann Li, co-chair of Long COVID Europe, the group behind the project, said in the release.
“Living with Long COVID means new levels of difficulty every day. Gamers love new challenges in their favorite games. We simply connected these dots to create a vivid simulation of living with Long COVID.”
Long COVID, which is the common term for post-acute COVID-19 syndrome, refers to symptoms that persist long after an acute attack of COVID-19 has subsided.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that about 10-20 percent of all COVID-19 infections will lead to some form of long-term COVID.
That’s at least 65 million people potentially experiencing this.
Research has shown that long-term COVID can affect multiple organs and parts of the body, with presentations sometimes drastically different between patients, and that it overlaps strongly with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS).
Three years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are all aware of the existence of a long COVID. But what it feels like for those affected by it can be harder to pin down.
The most common symptoms, according to the WHO, are fatigue, difficulty breathing/shortness of breath, chest pain, muscle pain and problems with memory, concentration and sleep, among other things. In practice, these symptoms can mean that people with long-term COVID may not be able to exercise or even walk as much as before, be unable to perform basic tasks as easily as before, have difficulty retaining thoughts or memories, and even difficulty getting out of bed.
In the Long COVID Mode project, these symptoms are shown by game modifications that can be downloaded from the project’s website and then applied to the game itself.
The effects vary depending on the game you play.
For example, in Elden Ring, the player will always be 25 percent slower, have slower stamina recovery in combat, struggle to hit targets with spells and arrows, and have trouble standing after a rest.
They may also experience any other symptoms including exercise intolerance, where the player is forced to stop moving for 3-5 seconds; indigestion, where healing hurts the player; and post-exertion malaise (PEM), which, among other things, leaves the player deflated and stunned for a few seconds.
“I think it’s a creative way to raise awareness, and we wanted to take on such a project because we think modifying it can definitely help people understand more about the subject, while also challenging them can enjoy one of their favorite games.” Garden of Eyes, one of the modders who helped create the project, said in the release.
In The Witcher 3, one of the consequences of playing in Long COVID mode is four stages of exertion: Fatigue, Exhaustion, Myalgia, and PEM, each of which gradually makes the game more difficult. In Minecraft, some of the effects of the mods are that the player cannot stay underwater for that long and experience a brief immobility after rapid movements to show the impact of shortness of breath.
Developers chose the three games they made not only because of their popularity, but also because they span a wide range of age groups, so the message can be felt more widely according to the release.
The project was launched to the world on Friday, ME/CFS Awareness Day, something the designers say was intentional.
“We want to raise awareness of Lung COVID as a serious neuro-immunological disease and make a difference to people affected by this debilitating illness and other post-acute infectious syndromes such as ME/CFS,” said Chantal Britt, Co-President of Long COVID Europe. the press release. “Despite the fact that those severely affected are forced to spend their lives at home or even bedbound, such diseases have been downplayed, underfunded and neglected by research, medicine and society for centuries.”
Long COVID Europe is a network of lung COVID patients in Europe, aiming to raise awareness about the condition and push for more research and funding for treatments.
