The first simulator to feel what it’s like to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease.

This week, the Spanish Confederation of Alzheimer’s and Other Dementias (CEAFA) announced the presentation of the “first immersive disease simulator.” A project they developed in collaboration with Momentum Spain and which is a map in the video game Fornite where players can “to experience first-hand the challenges and challenges of people living with Alzheimer’s disease.”

The card is called Lost in the world, and is now available openly to anyone who wants to play it. To do this, you just need to enter the code (7230-3324-3779) and begin the journey, which, as they explain, debunks the old mantra that it’s impossible to know what it’s like to have a disease as long as you can’t stand it.

“The offer was made to us by Momentum last year, back in September or October. And then the idea was test the game with different gamers And influencerstelling them it was a regular card to see how they would react when we told them that they were seeing the first signs of Alzheimer’s disease,” explains Raquel Gonyi from CEAFA’s Projects and Communications Department.

So they did it. They contacted six gamers The Spaniards, who have a total of 6.8 million subscribers, will try this. And they, of course, didn’t understand anything.” With the reactions that we recorded on video, we wanted to raise awareness so that they empathize with this disease. The idea is for the map to reach as many players as possible, and especially younger audiences who are really harder for us as an organization to reach. It is important to understand that Alzheimer’s disease affects not only patients, but the entire family. That’s why we wanted them to understand what it’s like,” Gonyi concludes.

The mission lasts about five minutes, although this depends on the player’s skill, and tries to recreate a generic Fornite map where players must fight each other until only one remainswho will be the winner. But from the very beginning you can tell there is something different. Mirrors return distorted images, characters’ careers slow down and speed up, and conversations repeat themselves. And at some point you enter a room exactly the same as the one you just left. In short, in other circumstances it would be logical to think that these are bugs in the video game. But in this case this is not the case.

Because everything is related to the symptoms that patients with this disease may suffer from. “There are many typical symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, such as confusion. That is, you don’t know where you are or what time it is. Then obviously memory loss, which is a huge difficulty in everyday life. But it is also difficult to communicate, it is very common to leave things out of place and there are many difficulties in solving everyday problems. You lose your ability to make decisions, you have trouble perceiving and understanding visual images, your judgment is impaired, so you have difficulty making decisions and taking initiative.”

The summary would be that people are “no longer like who they used to be.” And this may cause patients to become depressed as they notice changes in his humor and personality. Many people decide to stay away from any social activities for the same reason when they realize that the difficulties they face are increasing. This is why it is important to see a doctor at the first sign to try to slow the progression of the disease.

Simulators of other diseases

“It was easy to do. Fortnite has a program that allows anyone to create their own maps and then publish them. So we contacted a video game developer and did it,” says Victor Lopez from Momentum Spain. “People only need to enter a code into the video game to be able to play with our card, which basically has no expiration date. . And we are in talks with Epic Games, the developer of Fornite, to give it more distribution,” he adds.

Gonyi reports that in Spain there is no specific data on how many people suffer from Alzheimer’s disease. But it is assumed that In our country, about 1.2 million people suffer from some type of dementia, and it is known that Alzheimer’s disease is one of the most common. But because he insists that the disease affects the whole family, he estimates that around 4 million people in Spain are affected.

“Almost 50% of patients with Alzheimer’s disease are over 85 years of age. But there are also 9% of those who are under 65 years old.. This is largely due to the fact that diagnoses are being made earlier and when alarm bells begin to sound, people are quickly turning to doctors, who are also more prepared to understand and respond to the disease. In the past, young people with dementia have been somewhat ignored. But now we are working a lot on this issue,” says Gonyi.

“We’ve worked on these types of projects, but we weren’t told that any immersive games had yet been created to experience what it’s like to have dementia. Although I think more can now be done, even for other diseases.. It’s about raising awareness among young audiences, and to do this we need to tell the story in a way that they can understand perfectly,” concludes the CEAFA representative.