AbleGamers ‘Expansion Packs’ Bring Assistive Gaming To More People, And Faster
AbleGamers ‘Expansion Packs’ Bring Assistive Gaming To More People, And Faster
I don’t play video games much anymore (likely to change if I get some equipment of my own, but for now…). But games kept me sane for a long time. Specifically:
Nintendo DS was literally pain relief and suicide prevention before I could get treatment for my trigeminal neuralgia. Video games can put you into a trance like state that disconnects you from body sensations including pain.
World of Warcraft allowed me to continue my hobby of exploring random places when I was bedbound from a combination of myasthenia gravis and adrenal insufficiency. Eventually it became too exhausting even to play, but for awhile, while it lasted, it allowed me to keep exploring while physically unable to do so offline.
World of Warcraft also let me interact with a very good friend regularly, and to get to know some of her family and friends.
Unlike some people, I will never consider video games an adequate substitute for the flesh and blood world. There’s too much they can never capture no matter how advanced they get and I get nervous at some techno futurist types who think that something similar to video games will ever be even a half decent substitute for the physical world.
But unlike some other people, I will never pooh pooh video games as so unreal that they are entirely destructive and only stupid people would ever use them, while the real people in touch with real reality are horrified by their transparent unreality. That just seems so unnecessarily snobby. And I’ve gotten the assumption that I’m somehow not in touch with reality because I’ve used video games at times when nothing else was available to me to have certain experiences at all.
And I think video games are especially important to a lot of disabled people. Because pain control. And because they can allow us access to at least a simulated version of experiences we might never have any version of otherwise. And I’m not saying that as in, “Feel sorry for us because we can never have real experiences so wet must content ourselves with virtual substitutes, oh how wordlessly pathetic we are!” I’m just saying it because it’s true for a lot of us.
It’s been kind of rough for me lately, with trouble concentrating enough to get into gaming very much. Especially with as useful as it can be for dealing with pain, as has come up before.
Better accessibility sounds like an excellent thing, in general.