Whilst I was never a fan of his books, which were always a little dour and conservative for my tastes, I've been playing Tom Clancy video games since the first Rainbow Six game came out in the late 90's, and taught me that tactical gunplay could be just as satisfying as ploughing into a battlefield with an uzi in each hand and a rocket launcher hanging out of my back pocket. As such, I'm very much looking forward to “The Division,” a game that promises to take the Rainbow Six formula and apply it to an MMO environment.
The game, as far as I'm aware, is set in an open world, modern day Manhattan in the aftermath of deadly epidemic, with players asked to restore order in a fully destructible environment, whilst investigating the source of the fictional Variola Chimera pandemic; a virus three times as deadly as smallpox. It all sounds very exciting, but also disturbingly plausible, which is what Ubisoft, the game's developers, are counting on with this companion experience, which acts as a sort of “End of the world simulator,” and provides some much welcome context for those of us preparing to dive into the full game when it launches next week (March 8).
Called simply “Collapse,” the experience was created by BETC Paris to promote the game, and puts players in the unenviable shoes of patient zero, using real data to create a hyper-personalised experience of events to set the scene before the game’s launch. Developed in the years leading up to the game's launch, this fictional simulation demonstrates how quickly the cities and society that we take for granted can fall apart.
Collapse Walkthrough London
Collapse allows users to enter their exact location, and then it runs a simulation of what would happen if that user was the first person to catch a new strain of a disease, and tracks how quickly the world would descend into chaos. BETC Paris created the programme using Open Street Map, NASA open source data and IATA Flight routes, so it all feels very real. Occasionally, the user is given choices about which hospital to go to, or which country to flee to, but the end result is always the same, and it's always pretty terrifying.
BETC noted in its statement: “Collapse is intended to be a powerful reminder of the fragility and complexity of the interdependent systems that we rely on daily; power, transport, banking, hospitals and communications. When one fails, others follow, creating a deadly domino effect that can cripple society in a matter of days.” Collapse can be played across thousands of cities worldwide. In other words, it is able to access 95% of the world’s population, so you can experience how quickly society would collapse in places from London’s Baker Street to Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue.
In my play through I decided to input my own home address. Living a solid 40 minutes outside of any major populated area, I thought I stood a pretty good chance of keeping the infection contained, at least for a few weeks. By day six, however, the virus had spread to over 25,000 individuals in the immediate area and a state of emergency had officially been declared. Then there was a raid at the Aldi in Wollaston for some reason and the streets of Stourbridge were set ablaze by rioters. One harmless flight to Cork (I thought it seemed like the least populated option from the choices offered) later and a few (presumably) sleepless nights later and over 40,000,000 people had been infected. Global marshall law was imposed by day 11 and by day 15, global infrastructure had collapsed. The world plunged into darkness on day 26. Bleak. But pretty damn compelling!
Benjamin Hiorns is a freelance writer and struggling musician from the plague ridden town of Kidderminster in the UK.
