Gamers love a challenge, but sometimes video games themselves don't provide enough of a challenge, so they raise the bar with all sorts of self-imposed challenges. Speedrunner finishes games that would take most players hours in just minutes.The cunning type won super mario 64 Completed using a drum kit Castlevania Symphony of the Night Blindfold. My son even assembled a working controller using orange and banana slices.
However, it was Twitch streamer Perrikaryal who took the top spot on the gaming challenge leaderboard. During the broadcast, Perry plays a video game using only his head. Well, her mind, her electroencephalogram (EEG), and some impressive modifications.
EEG uses electrodes placed on the scalp to measure and record electromagnetic brain activity. The brain activity Perry discovered can be translated into digital commands. This explanation runs the risk of oversimplifying things, as if the player simply thinks “I'm going to kick this boss's butt” and that gets his butt kicked.
In fact, the process requires patience and dedication, but as Perry said in an interview with Freethink, that's what makes the victory all the more worthwhile in the end.
Streaming coming soon…
Like many young people, Perry initially found the thought of performing in front of people painful. Because of this, she admits that her dream of becoming a stand-up comedian became quite difficult. One day, a friend of hers suggested she try streaming so she could practice acting in front of a screen instead of in a theater filled with nervous faces.
Perry took on the challenge. She has a master's degree in psychology, so her early content focused on topics in that field. She analyzed the news, debunked crazy claims about her mind, and played games using her unique psychological perspective (titled below) super limit, closing shiftand detroit: become human).
As her streaming funds accumulated over time, she decided to use them to purchase an Emotiv EEG. Although commercially available electroencephalograms are not as powerful as medical-grade electroencephalograms used in neuroscience research and brain disease diagnosis, Perry is still curious to try out the device and see what it can do. I did.
She first wore it when playing horror games. She displays her own brain activity in her 3D visualization, allowing her viewers to jump and watch her gray matter glow during her scares or crackle with energy during her intense chases. You can see them making noises. But she soon realized that EEG's Brain Computer interface had another interesting feature. It means that users can identify and remember patterns that occur when they think of certain words or visualize certain images.
Using this ability, she began experimenting with turning her mind into a video game controller.
Insert your brain and play
Perry begins with a unique mental visualization. For example, a plate that rotates on a stick. EGG reads her brain activity as she draws a picture of the plate. Her brain waves, their frequency, and general information about where the signals are coming from are collected. This creates her own unique patterns that Perri can train her EEG's interface to recognize. Repeating the 8-second recording several times will ensure that the interface recognizes the pattern.
Actually, it's a little more than that Several: “I do that 600, 700 times until I want to cry. It's driven by sadness,” Perry says with a laugh. “When I actually use it, it's really satisfying and fun.”
Those eight seconds eventually add up to hours, but once the interface is trained, Perri will be able to map its patterns to a virtual XBox controller. This pattern acts as a command input for the brain. So instead of pressing the B button to make the character evade the danger, Perry imagines a spinning plate and the character evades the danger.
This is the ideal development, but like overcoming any challenge, it involves a lot of trial and error.
“Mind control training, or figuring out which visualizations work, took me the most time. It wasn't until 700 tries that I realized it wasn't actually working. Then I had to start all over again. “I have to, but this is painful,” she says.
For example, Perri eventually realized that visualizing rotating plates was problematic in fast-paced action games. The quick swings of the in-game camera made it difficult for her to keep her mind's plates in mind, and the eye movements required to track the on-screen action further disrupted the signal sent to the EEG. it was done.
For the visualization to work, I needed to make it more specific. very specific. It can't be just a plate. It had to be a unique plate that spun at a speed set to “You Spin Me Round” by Dead or Alive. The more I practiced and experimented, the better I got at dodging my characters (Like a record, baby, right round) Projectiles thrown by enemies in the game.
“I kept trying different things until I thought it would work. It was really hard at first because I had no idea what to do. I had to reboot and do something else, or go to another level of detail. Add to that,” Perry said. “But when you start something, no matter how bad it is, you have to see it through to the end. You have to finish it.”
A new challenger is coming
The first game Perry played using mental commands was Mine Craft. She still used a controller to move her character Steve. Her self-imposed audacity was simply to use the commands of her mind to force Steve to break the block. And to her delight, it worked.
“I kept thinking it was a fluke,” Perry says. It wasn't a fluke after all. ”
After his first success, Perry looked for another challenge. And this brought her her next challenge. elden ring. For beginners, elden ring This is the latest version of From Software. soul series. The series is notorious for its high level of difficulty, and as one of its earliest games, dark soulwith the tagline “Prepare to die.”
Even if you're playing with a standard controller, Perri's first take is: elden ring This led to many game overs, so she set a simple challenge.At least the first boss, Margit the Fell Omen. One spiritual command.
She trained her brainwave interface by visualizing pushing something heavy forward. She maps it to the game's attack button, fires off some spells, and eventually defeats the Omen.Her mission accomplished, but she wasn't done yet elden ring still.
“I kind of kept going, but as I went along, it got harder and harder,” Perry said. “To be honest, everything got out of control.”
She began challenging bosses one after another with increasing complexity. She added a mental command for evasion and a mental command for recovery. She incorporated eye tracking to control the game's camera. By the time she reached Mogot the Premonition King, she was able to stomp the boss completely hands-free. She also defeated the game's toughest opponent, Michela's Melania Blade. Michela's Melania Blade is the only character in the series to gain notoriety online for her player-killing antics.
Are you going to play another game?
Since then elden ring, Perry has continued to seek new challenges.She used mind commands to enter the race truck maniagrab a buddy pal worldfight in smash bros.she also played Pac-Manthe first game she played using only mind commands.
“Everyone has been so nice and supportive. When I've made small progress or little bits of progress, I think that's an exciting accomplishment, but I'm worried that for viewers this might not be fun to watch.” I'm worried. But no, they're always excited with me and that's great,” Perry says.
Of course, Perry has encountered some negative and sad people, but it's the internet after all. However, she even finds these comments positive in their way.
“I like it when people think like this. [it’s fake] Because it became clear that this technology was not as well known as it should have been. The field of psychology and neuroscience may not be well understood or well-involved. So that's a great sign, if that makes sense. ” (She added that such comments have become less common as her understanding has spread.)
Looking to the future, Perry expects technology and science to continue to improve as more and more people become excited about them. Her friend has already created a VR MOD for her. skyrim This uses EEG technology to build new layers of immersion, including the need to concentrate to regenerate the spell's magic.
She also hopes this technology will increasingly provide solutions for people with accessibility issues. Traditional game controllers can be difficult for some people to use, and hands-free devices such as EEG as well as voice commands and eye tracking offer viable solutions to some of the barriers people face. It may be possible. As technology advances and becomes more feasible, more people will be able to experiment to find those solutions.
That's the great thing about experiments like Perry's. Playing a game with your own head, drum set, or fruit slices may sound outlandish, but these challenges provide more than just a sense of satisfaction for tinkerers. When you share, you get an entire community of people who share your passion excited, trying something new themselves, and even creating new innovations that others will enjoy in turn.
“I'm not done yet,” Perry says. “Here's the problem! You have to keep going until you can't do it anymore. And then you can do more!”
