More gaming options for Jamie
Friday, January 18th, 2019
Jamie had a spinal injury a few years ago and was very much into his Xbox 360 before that, playing games like Call of Duty and Forza.
He’d tried an Xbox One controller with a makeshift plastic mould attached, but pushing down with his chin meant that he’d hit both the L and R trigger buttons at the same time – not exactly ideal for accelerating and braking in racing games – so it was great to welcome him to our Games Room this week, where our specialist assessment team took a look at his setup to see if anything could be improved.
Jacob, one of our therapists, takes up the story: “Jamie has a metal pole across his chin for mounting things like his phone and a stylus pen, which he picks up with his mouth and types. He’d mounted the Xbox controller on the pole and used his tongue to press buttons, which was difficult.”
Our team started off by adding a thumbstick extension to a standard Xbox One controller, and added button switches by his arms via a Microsoft Accessible Controller for braking (red button) and accelerating (blue button).
He quickly got the hang of the setup for Forza, so we moved onto Call of Duty: Black Ops 4.
“The switches were already in place for aim (red) and shoot (blue),” said Jacob. “So we added extra switches including a walk-forward button (yellow) and sprint (green), so he can now play COD with this setup and can take on his girlfriend at Fortnite.”
We’ve lent Jamie the setup and we’re looking forward to hearing how the gaming wars progress!