Cabin Fever
How historical pandemics have spawned the most infectious trope of indoor games and given players the best reason to stay inside.
it’s 1973, 2403 years after Thucydides chronicled the plague of Athens and the year of The Oregon Trail, of rampant virtual dysentery, measles, and cholera. In some of the most-played, best-selling videogames since—RPG, FPS, RTS, or otherwise—the grand narrative of uncomplicated self-preservation has become an endemic design tool. Like a mutating virus, the timeline of our ancient, continuous, and hellish war with pathogens has divided and evolved. Here’s a brief rundown of our real and imagined diseased existence.
