Plague Inc.

About

Plague Inc. is a real-time strategy game in which the player creates and evolves a deadly pathogen in the hopes of infecting the world with a plague. After its release on mobile devices, a console version of the game was released on Steam in 2015. The game became a subject of memes in meme communities on Reddit in 2018.

History

Plague Inc. was created and published by Ndemic Creations.^[1] Inspired by the 2008 Flash game Pandemic II by Dark Realm Studios, it was released for iOS on May 26th, 2012 and for Android on October 4th of the same year. The game uses an epidemic model which players must utilize to maximize the effect of their pathogen.

The game proved popular, having been downloaded over 85 million times, and in 2015, a console version of the game, Plague Inc. Evolved, was released on Windows, Mac OSx, Playstation 4, and Xbox One.

Reception

The game was well-received. On top of being a commercial success, it received a score of 80/100 on Metacritic.^[2] Critics praised the game's gameplay, strategy elements, and humor in spite of what some called a bare-bones presentation. Plague Inc.: Evolved also received an 80/100 on Metacritic.^[3] It was a runner up in IGN's 2012 awards for "Best Strategy Game."

Online Presence

Plague Inc. continues to have a popular online community. A subreddit for the game has over 2,900 subscribers.^[4] The game also has over 132,000 likes on Facebook.^[5]

Related Memes

Poisoned Water

Poisoned Water refers to a series of jokes that grew popular on Reddit's /r/me_irl subreddit in late October of 2018. A user made several posts in which he offered the subreddit a poisoned glass of water and that a cure to the poison was being worked on in Greenland, which itself is a reference to the video game Plague, Inc.

On October 28th, 2018, Redditor kubapoke made several posts creating a narrative where water offered in the first post was poisoned (examples shown below).

kubapoke continued the narrative over several other posts, concluding with a post saying a cure for the poisoned water was being developed in Greenland (shown below, right). The reference to Greenland is itself a reference to the game Plague Inc., in which a player attempts to affect the world with a deadly pathogen. Greenland is difficult to infect in the game as it is a sparsely populated island with limited sea communication.

Greenland and Madagascar

Since the release of the game, Greenland and Madagascar have gained notoriety among players as locations which are hardest to successfully infect due to limited sea communication routes leading to the countries. For example, a post on /r/memes^[15] referencing the game gained over 22,000 points (shown below, top left). An inquiry about these jokes was posted to /r/OutOfTheLoop on November 5th, 2018.^[6]

Anti-Vaxxers Petition

On July 23rd, 2018, Plague Inc. received a free Royal Update which included a "Science Denial" scenario.^[7] In the scenario, exiled science experts work on a cure in a "Super Science" utopia established in a random country, while the rest of the world relies on ineffective alternative medicines.

People around the world have stopped believing in science, medicine and even diseases. One country decides to offer scientists sanctuary and from here they hope to save humanity from itself! Can you wipe them out in time?

On February 17th, Change.org^[8] user Eduard Gabrian created a petition calling to add anti-vaxxers as a buff in Plague Inc. On the next day, the user posted a screenshot of the petition along with a link to it to /r/memes subreddit.^[9] The post gained over 680 upvotes in one two days.

On the same day, Redditor^[10] jojuju1611 posted an edited screenshot of the petition to /r/me_irl subreddit, where it gained over 18,600 upvotes in two days. In the following days, the edited screenshot was posted on numerous subreddits, including /r/PewdiepieSubmissions^[11] (33,900 upvotes), /r/dank_meme^[12] (30,600 upvotes) and /r/teenagers^[13] (5,100 upvotes).

!

On February 19th, Redditor^[14] itsbryandude made a post on /r/gaming subreddit pointing out that a similar gameplay mode already existed in the game.

Search Interest

External References