Guitar Hero Helps Burn Victims

Here’s another Wii-hab story, this one out of William Randolph Hearst Burn Center at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center where therapists are adapting the Wii for burn victim rehabilitation. Burned skin and grafts require movement and stretching, although this is painful. Therapists have found using motion sensitive games for the Wii help patients to move more. Guitar Hero III is used to get patients to move their arms and upper torso.

Blind Hero: UNev Reno Team Modifies Game Interfaces for the Disabled

Chris Kohler at Wired’s Game|Life Blog writes about Dr. Eelke Folmer’s work over at University of Nevada, Reno.

Folmer’s most awesome project thus far is informally referred to as “Blind Hero.” It’s a guitar-based music game that can be played without looking at the screen. Folmer’s group developed a glove that vibrates your fingers a split-second before you’re supposed to play each note in the game. It’s difficult to play, but with enough practice you can experience the sensation of playing guitar without the onscreen commands.

Kohler noted that “Blind Hero” is the brainchild of UNR PhD student Bei Yuan. Additional work by Folmer & company includes modifying existing games so that they can be played easier by the disabled.

One example of how this works is a modified Mario Kart-style game for PC. The player’s kart automatically accelerates and steers to the right. Pressing the switch allows the player to steer to the left. A modified version of Half-Life 2 that Folmer showed us puts the player into the body of an automatically controlled bot, and the player simply needs to press the fire button when an enemy gets in his sights … Folmer stresses that his group’s ambition is not to create new game designs for people with disabilities, but to modify already-existing games, to show that any game can be rendered accessible.

This continues a long series of efforts to make videogames more accessible, many springing from the minds of university researchers. I’ve noted past efforts on brain computer interfaces that don’t require hands, and more recent presentations on neural networks at GDC this year.

Prick Skin to Advance a Level

If you missed the last episode of South Park, you missed yet another whimsical take on the videogame industry by creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, this time attacking Guitar Hero. Another riff on videogames and doped up rock stars centered on a game called “Heroin Hero,” where the player sticks a needle in his arm while trying to catch an onscreen dragon. “No one ever catches the dragon.” There was a rather overt reference to the comparisons between videogames and heroin.

In real life, there is a new game that actually does have kids poking themselves with needles. Not for drug hits, but for glucose readings. It’s something that diabetics don’t particularly care for, and something child diabetics sometimes have a tendency to avoid to an unhealthy extent.

Word from Australia is, the $299 Gameboy cartridge combines glucose checking with on-screen action.

Kids who test regularly for healthy levels of blood glucose are awarded extra points to unlock new characters and secret game levels.

Characters in the five specially-designed games include a galaxy-hopping maverick who fights his way through a planet of aliens to rescue the admiral’s daughter, and a regular boy called Hunter who takes on Carnie Cal and his evil clowns.

“It’s a good idea, just brilliant, particularly for boys who are not so good at doing their blood glucose testing,” said Dr Neville Howard, president of Diabetes Australia-NSW.

Necessity, apparently, was the mother of invention for the device, which was the brainstorm of an entrepreneur from Minnesota. It offers positive feedback in the game for regular glucose checking.

The device was invented by an American businessman Paul Wessel, funded by an Australian investment bank and jointly marketed by Diabetes Australia-NSW.

“I stumbled across the idea really,” said Mr Wessel … “My son Luke is diabetic and he kept deliberately losing his blood glucose meter because he hated testing, so this was a solution.”

The Aussies seem to like it. The article concludes with a quote from Paul Zimmet, director of the International Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, praising the device.

The game has been in development for a couple years now. A quick scan on the web turned up discussion on the Games for Health site, and in US News & World Report. Apparently, the device combines a glucose meter with a Nintendo Gameboy cartridge, and incorporates the readings from the meter into the game. By all accounts from Australia, Mr. Wessel’s efforts are successfully coming to fruition.

References:
Streisand, B. (2006, August 14). “Not just child’s play.” US News & World Report, pp. 48-50.

Video game turns skin pricks into fun. (2007, November 14). Herald Sun. [Online]. Available: http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/
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