Keeping skin out of the game

THIS new computer game isn’t much fun. You only get one life, there are dozens of ways to die and your enemy is invisible. The game’s playing area is limited to a few tents under a blazing sun and most of the people you encounter are vomiting. Yet thousands of people around the world are clamouring to play it.

The Ebola Training Challenge was created by a few dozen programmers, healthcare workers, artists and academics during a weekend-long programming event at the Living Computer Museum in Seattle. The resulting simulation allows volunteers to experience, and fall foul of, some of the challenges of working in an Ebola Treatment Unit (ETU) in a risk-free environment.