INFEKTION

INFEKTION is a historical-fiction, database-mystery game made for Robert Berkman's Digital Disinformation course.

The year is 1985 in Moscow. The KGB's Directorate T handles Scientific and Technical Intelligence. You are one of their analysts.

Reports suggest the West is suffering from a virus outbreak, allegedly linked to the development of a biological weapon. You've been given restricted access to the records and reports archive. Using what's available, assess:

• Is the United States developing a bioweapon?
• Is this bioweapon outbreak contained to the United States?
• Are the sources of the above assessments to be trusted?

Your assessments must be backed by sufficient evidence, and your final report will be evaluated by your superior.

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The game is in active development for a graduate course in Media Studies. The final will release in early May, around ~2 weeks from posting.

This demo is a vertical slice of the game. It contains enough documents in the database to support all conclusions to the Assignment's first question. The other two questions will become available on release.

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Operation Denver (sometimes referred to as "Operation INFEKTION") was an active measure disinformation campaign run by the KGB in the 1980s to plant the idea that the United States had invented HIV/AIDS as part of a biological weapons research project at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Source

As of 2018, about 700,000 people have died of HIV/AIDS in the United States since the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and nearly 13,000 people with AIDS in the United States die each year. Source