I had an online acquaintance who I practiced with in a fighting game called Blazblue. Said friend was also a martial-artist who also did live-steel fights. Dangerous, yes, but apparently there were rules about what weapons you could bring in, "first blood" and other such rules to try and keep things non-deadly.
Anyway, one of his opponents used poison as his weapon, and now his hands were permanently F'd up due to that one poison fight.
Long story short: I didn't see him online much after that. Its difficult for disabled people to get controllers that work well for them.
And its not just arbitrary fights where people can lose the fine motor control of their hands. I know people who lost fine control after a bad car accident. (Fortunately, this one was temporary and after about a year, she got most of her motor control back into her hands).
So any research into allowing injured people to better play video games (a hobby I'm very much like), is a win in my eyes. I've got at least two people who've I've personally met who would benefit. Even with today's advanced medicine, its not guaranteed that motor control will return back to your hands if you are injured.
It doesn't even have to be injories; a stroke can easily cause pretty much unpredictable amounts of fine motor control loss in one hand or the other, and that can happen to anyone at any time.
I had an online acquaintance who I practiced with in a fighting game called Blazblue. Said friend was also a martial-artist who also did live-steel fights. Dangerous, yes, but apparently there were rules about what weapons you could bring in, "first blood" and other such rules to try and keep things non-deadly.
Anyway, one of his opponents used poison as his weapon, and now his hands were permanently F'd up due to that one poison fight.
Long story short: I didn't see him online much after that. Its difficult for disabled people to get controllers that work well for them.
And its not just arbitrary fights where people can lose the fine motor control of their hands. I know people who lost fine control after a bad car accident. (Fortunately, this one was temporary and after about a year, she got most of her motor control back into her hands).
So any research into allowing injured people to better play video games (a hobby I'm very much like), is a win in my eyes. I've got at least two people who've I've personally met who would benefit. Even with today's advanced medicine, its not guaranteed that motor control will return back to your hands if you are injured.
And injuries can really happen to anybody.