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The best of the 51 games felt as if they were opening a dialogue, allowing me to communicate digitally about topics I wasn’t always vocal about, or even desired to be vocal about, in my daily life. To ensure that these short experiments in game-making were fact-based, the game makers not only had access to epidemiological models developed by Georgia Tech, but also could consult with a team of medical and health experts organized with input from the National Academy of Sciences’ cultural-education-focused LabX department. Participants were challenged to build a game from scratch, known in game development circles as a game jam, that somehow reflected our pandemic and the data and science that seek to understand it.
The collection of mostly short vignettes came out of Jamming the Curve, a competition spearheaded by the team behind IndieCade, the yearly celebration of play that would be happening this month in Santa Monica if the events of the world had not intervened. Also, they were made in collaboration with an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, meaning a number of them contain actual research. Of course, it helps that these games generally don’t present dark, complex simulations. I 100% did not know I needed a COVID-19 game - let alone 51 of them - but I absolutely did. The virus and its effects had consumed enough of my life.
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Surrounded, concerned and frustrated by our current pandemic, I certainly didn’t want COVID-19 to enter my game-playing time.