Interactive Network Model Games
Game Guide
1
Nodes And Edges
The purpose of this game/simulation is to model spread of infectious disease through small population of socially connected individuals.
You will be presented with a network of nodes, each representing one person and edges, representing social connections between them.
The number of nodes and the way they are connected depends on particular scenario. In the most simple scenario the network contains dozen nodes and each node is connected to roughly the same number of nodes.
Simulation runs through several turns and each turn consists of one or more stages ( i.e. infecting patient zero, tracing contacts, testing contacts… ). We will explain each turn in the next sections.
2
Setting The Game Parameters
Before starting your game session you will be presented with a choice to set up one or more game parameters – depending on the scenario.
In some scenarios you will need to set a dice number from 1 to 6 that will determine the chance of a person catching a virus. In other scenarios you will be prompted to input a number from 1 to 100.
By pressing start game button you will start game turns.
3
Resetting Game
You can press reset game button anytime you want to start a new session of the game.
However, this button will be disabled during Finish the Simulation stage.
4
Infecting Initial Node(s)
After pressing start game button you will be prompted with the button that sets the first infected node.
Depending on the scenario this will be one random node, node(s) set manually by you, or entirely pre-set infected nodes.
Newly infected person are circled in orange.
After that you will be prompted to end turn.
5
Ending Turn
When you press End Turn button all newly infected nodes will be put in the recovery/hospital.
On the right side of your screen a small frame with turn summary information will be placed in the Turn Summary list.
6
From Recovery To Disease Immunity
Each node spends five turns until full recovery – indicated by a growing green arc.
Fully immune nodes are indicated by a green border. Immune nodes cannot catch disease.
In some scenarios you will be prompted to choose immune/vaccinated nodes during game parameters setup.
7
Tracing Contacts
Newly infected nodes are disease transmitters.
By pressing Trace Contacts you will identify nodes that are connected to newly infected ones. Those contacts are potentially infected. Traced nodes are circled in yellow.
In the next stage those nodes will be tested.
8
Testing Contacts
After tracing contacts you will be prompted to Test Contacts. All traced nodes circled in yellow are potential newly infected nodes.
Each node will throw a six sided dice. If the number is less or equal to the parameter K set in Game Parameters stage the node is immediately infected, indicated by a orange circle.
After the end of turn those nodes will be put into recovery and their contacts will be traced in the next turn.
9
Turn Summary
On the right side of your screen a small frame with turn summary information will be placed in the Turn Summary list after each turn.
10
Histogram
Another useful visualization tool is histogram.
After each turn a column will be added to the histogram in the upper right corner. Each column consists of number of rows that is equal to the number of nodes in the network, each row representing one node and its state at that turn.
White color indicates healthy but non-immune node, red indicates infected and green indicates fully recovered/immune node.
At the end of the game session you will also be able to export histogram data as a csv table.
11
Endgame
The simulation stops after no new cases of infections are detected at the end of a turn.
After reaching that condition you will be prompted with the Finish Simulation button that will start automatic calculation of turns until there are no infected nodes left in the network.