Have you ever heard about KRI?
It stands for The Russian Conference of Game Developers. But
even Russians do not always understand the abbreviation.
We presented there our last and actually the first project “Pathologic”.
By the way if you are reading the text it means that you are at
the website of this game. The project, for those who do not know
yet, is about a pandemic of the disease identified by our studio
as Febris sabulosa.
That is not the main idea of the game that is not the most interesting
feature of it, but that is the situation the main character is
placed at.
That is why we decided to create a medical indeed, a little bit
darker atmosphere at our
booth. We brought a lot of medical equipment,
we hired an actor, who had to act as a doctor, well-known professor
in the middle of nowhere chair of the State medical college Innokentiy
Savvovich Pestitskiy, PhD.
At the opening of the first day the situation went out of our
control. Strange
developers had not caught our idea and believed that they
could get medical care free of charge at our booth.
Probably the problem with free medical insurance made itself
felt or perhaps developers
in Russia do not normally have time to visit a doctor and
they decided to combine business with pleasure.
However just two hours after the opening of the exhibition we
faced the problem of lack
of medicines and shortage of medical skills. It led us to
the decision to buy some vitamins, simple innocuous medicines
and to start treating people.
They were happy! They found themselves lucky of the
results. That was our considerable mistake. Who could know
that instead of the game presentation we would have to provide
medical
treatment free of charge?
So during the first day we examined
45 people, distributed all our stocks of drugs and decided
to put
the place into quarantine to have at least a little chance
to
leave the booth and to visit some forums and listen to lectures
we were interested in.
On the second day the situation only worsened. Even our neighbors
and simultaneously publishers, Buka
company, who actually had to know that we were not a medical
laboratory but game developers came
to get the examination of professor Pestitskiy. Moreover they
dragged some strange creatures with ears and tails whom they asked
us to investigate. Even if we were doctors what could have we
done with such
strange animals?
At the very beginning of the third day we decided to come what
may and started investigating people to write
health certificates and distribute vitamins. The situation
became complicated by our
actor who started to have a long talk, to react only to the
address “Professor” and even in the chats with us
tried to put a diagnosis.
We were ready to close the booth and to bring our professor to
a real doctor, but the next event actually unsettled everybody.
An
unknown person in coma was found at the Buka’s booth.
And being doctors we had to help him and to try to save his life.
The
doctor and a nurse had done their utmost but the patient died.
We
fixed the time ‘of death and started to decontaminate
the territory. The participants and visitors of the conference
do not have an instinct of self-preservation at all. They did
not want to leave the conference or at least our booth.
We distributed our last drugs and sent our Head to inform the
people about the dangerous situation and possible fatal outcome
of Febris sebulosae. After his speech people started applauding
and put questions. Even though it was strange to us that was a
definite success of our laboratory!
Eventually the next patient was found not far from the laboratory.
Sanitars brought him to the doctors and this time we
succeeded to save his life!
Finally our project was recognized as the most
non-standard means of fight against epidemic.
It seems to me that we can overcome Febris sebulosae we need
just a chance and we will start doing it let us only get out of
that strange spot they placed us after the exhibition.
See you next year at KRI! We have some valuable ideas of presenting
our booth next time!
