Ask Slashdot: Gaming With Only One Hand?

Hork_Monkey writes "I recently sustained a severe injury to one of my arms, and am lucky not to be an amputee. I'm an avid gamer (primarily PC, but also XBox) and looking for advice one how to adapt to the challenge now presented of enjoying one of my favorite pastimes. My google-fu has led me to some devices and tips, but I wanted to tap the collective while experimenting. I know there have to be some readers in similar positions who could provide some guidance. I'm figuring a few things out, and also hope to share what I find for others in a similar situation."

Why use any hands?

[decibel.places]

Emotiv technology lets you game hands free (someday) http://emotiv.com/ [emotiv.com]

An idea

[wbr1]

First, sorry for your injury. I know little about electronic gaming with injuries and I wish you luck with it. But you may want to consider pen and paper and/or board gaming a a well. With the right group it can be great.

Might want to try a supermouse

[PPalmgren]

Given PC gaming, pure keyboard play is difficult as is switching, unless you're playing something like Civ V. A lot of people who play MMOs have these supermice with 10 keys on them and that's probably going to be your best bet.

For example, http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-mice/mmog-mice [razerzone.com]

Re:Might want to try a supermouse

[Anonymous Coward]

I've gotten a lot more mileage out of the Logitech version than the Razers. The 12 thumb buttons are broken up into two distinct sets of six. It's not visibly all that significant but for keeping track physically of what button you're about to push I've found it invaluable. The Razers have the 12 button set as a single flat bay which makes it difficult for me to tell on the inner buttons which exact one I'm about to push unless I'm keeping very careful track of where my thumb is.

http://www.logitech.com/en-us/gaming/mice-keyboard-combos/g600-mmo-gaming-mouse

You'd have to be pretty creative with your key assignments for certain games, but in many cases it wouldn't be rough. Map out your WASD to you 10, 12, 13, 14 keys and suddenly the upper bay of keys has your movement keys as a part of it, leaving you 8 other function keys. There's a third button off to the right of the LMB and RMB which acts as a modifier if you really need to map a lot of keys to the mouse.

Ben Heck

[ryzvonusef]

Ask Ben Heck to make you one :P

http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/09/ben-heck-splits-and-condenses-a-pair-of-xbox-360-controllers-for/ [engadget.com]

Re:Learn to use your feet

[elfprince13]

Actually, I think this [teamliquid.net] is probably the only thing that needs to be posted in response to this question.

Accessibility Community and Resources

[QuantumMist]

The field you want, in general, is called accessibility. I tell you that so it can help your Google and other searches. I encourage you to reach out to the organizations listed on this Wikipedia page. I know some of them personally as I'm blind and a PhD student in computer science and an accessibility researcher, so I'll be more than happy to perform introductions on LinkedIn, email, twitter, whatever you like, just let me know. Here's the Wikipedia page listing some organizations. I'd start with Able Gamers. Mark's a good guy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_accessibility [wikipedia.org] Next, I'd encourage you to get on twitter, if that's possible. I can connect you to tons of folks to cover everything from one handed typing approaches (both paid and open source solutions), speech input alternatives, strategies developed by other users of technology with the use of only one hand, and so forth. I'm @SinaBahram on there. Just drop me a line. Btw, the accessibility community often goes by the numerical acronym A11Y, so look for #A11Y or just a11y when Googling around, and that can help some of your searches as well. Sorry if this post is a bit disjoint. I would love to leave more comments on Slashdot and interact with it more, but Slashdot has repeatedly ignored my various emails and other attempts to reach out to them, since I use a screen reader and there are some serious accessibility issues that could so easily be fixed if I could just get ahold of the right person *poke poke to anyone who reads this*. To you or anybody else looking for more information on accessibility, technology used by folks with disabilities, etc., just contact me via whatever mechanism you like. It's all on my site, which I'm not sure my profile links to, so here it is. www.SinaBahram.com I hope this helps, and please don't' hesitate to contact me so we can get you connected to the right folks to get you gaming again.

Re:Learn to use your feet

[phantomfive]

Second that. I knew a guy who had no use in his hands, but managed to use standard controllers with his feet. It was amazing to watch. I guess you'd have to increase the dexterity of your feet a lot before you got to that point.

Re:Next Level

[Guspaz]

You wouldn't be the first, this guy already games with no hands:

http://www.twitch.tv/aieron/videos [twitch.tv]

Brief summary: muscular dystrophy, no useful movement apart from neck and face, so he controls the mouse with his cheek and earlobe, and the keyboard with a pen in his mouth. He plays stuff like guildwars 2, LoL, etc, and he's way better at them than I am.

Re:Why use any hands?

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw this and it looked like a gimmick. Have you used it? If so, how effective is it? Does it work for. Things more complicated than pong?

Hello there. I saw your [the original OP's] question and thought I could step in and answer this.

Speaking as professional in the Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) field, experienced with both consumer and medical/research grade EEG hardware, I can unequivocally say that no, neither the Emotiv headset nor the latest cutting edge five-figure-plus hardware is or ever will replace a joystick for gaming when it comes to responsiveness, fine control, or accuracy.

That said, BCI is not a gimmick. There are very specific applications for which the technology is well suited, with examples from special needs assistance to providing a "third arm" during space walks (normally an astronaut has to hold on to the structure leaving only one hand free to manipulate tools but a BCI-operated clamp can augment this). The limitations beyond such special cases are as biological as they are technical, namely attempting to process signal fluctuations on the scale of microvolts in environments which include noise from every electrical appliance known to man, and which themselves are originating from very small clusters of neurons, barricaded behind a wall of skull and skin, not to mention varying in location and amplitude from person to person.

On the other hand, ECoG [wikipedia.org] technology (implanting directly into the brain) is extremely promising and perhaps could one day provide approximately the level of control you are seeking, ignoring issues such as scar-tissue building up over time or the whole brain surgery and cracking-the-skull-open requirements.

Cheers