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How One Man Helps Keep Game Controllers Accessible
capedgirardeau writes with a clipping from the AP about engineer Ken Yankelevitz: "[W]ith the retired Bozeman engineer's 70th birthday approaching, disabled gamers say they fear there will be no one to replace Yankelevitz, who has sustained quadriplegic game controllers for 30 years almost entirely by himself. The retired aerospace engineer hand makes the controllers with custom parts in his Montana workshop, offering them at a price just enough to cover parts." Yankelevitz builds interfaces to control an Xbox 360 or PlayStation.
TFA: "Quadriplegic gamers now have around a dozen different actions they can work with their mouth."
Damn, I need a quadriplegic gamer consultant to provide training for my wife.
Yes, but due to the dynamics of capitalism, they don't.
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Really what a great and admirable hobby. This is a gentleman that must sleep well every night.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
nearly 15 years reading /. and I still fall in a goatse.cx trap !
He's not trying to complete on price w/ Microsoft; So there's nothing stopping him from buying an official controller for each one he builds to get the interface hardware. It just becomes part of the BOM cost.
Then he just has to replace the buttons and joysticks with ones that work for his end-users.
This is a quality of life issue, asshat.
Quads spend most of their time confined to a bed. A game controller build to meet their needs opens worlds of interactive entertainment to people who would otherwise be limited to passive consumption (television) or limited interaction via a visual keyboard.
captcha: network
And thats what these people gain: a greater network of human interaction. Shame on you for pissing on that.
Similar projects and people:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83nSodg-HTU
http://benheck.com/03-16-2008/new-single-handed-controller
http://benheck.com/Games/Xbox360/controls/1hand/singlehandcontroller.htm
I think it's great that there are a handful of people focussing on gamers who would otherwise struggle with standard controllers. I only wish the Sonys, Microsofts, and Nintendos of this world would occasionally take the lead in this research, or at the very least contribute to some R&D once in a while.
As a gamer who has a mild neurological condition that limits fine motor control in one of my hands... and have become increasingly annoyed at the complexity of controllers and control schemes (the shoulder buttons on a dualshock controller are particularly hard to reliably control)...
I both salute this man, and I wonder what kinds of games one can actually play with such a controller... the amount of reflexes and reaction time required to play most (90%?) of the games, seems like it would be beyond what you could convey through one of these devices in a useful amount of time..
If someone wanted to fill his shoes, it wouldn't be an easy task.
He puts each controller together by hand, using his engineering skills to solder dozens of switches and circuits. Controllers are offered for just over $200 and include a 1-year warranty for repairs.
"If the bottom line is profit, there's no way to make a profit on these," Yankelevitz said.
Yankelevitz said larger companies and game manufacturers have shown no interest in producing the controllers because the market is so small. He's sold just over 800 of the devices through 30 years. Factory construction of the controller would be cost prohibitive, over $1,000 each.
Man builds 30 years of quadriplegic gaming
You would think that taking a loss on a thousand controllers per year would be worth a bit of positive press to compete with lots of negative press over things like rootkits and getting hacked. I mean can't you just see the "Sony cares" ads?
Microsoft and Sony should build these controllers to increase their reputation, so that people will see them as "savior of the disabled". This gives them one extra chance to do massive evil.
The "dynamics of capitalism" is just market force. It doesn't have to be capitalism actually.
North Korea wouldn't be building these controllers (even if there are to be 360s sold there) as it isn't seen to be beneficial to the country, it's better for people to focus on work. All the funding needed to get the controller on the market is better off used for pleasing Dear Leader.
And North Korea is the best Korea!
Democracy is for the people; you only vote once per season and we'll do the rest of the work for you don't have to.
"Shouldn't this be something Microsoft and Sony should be doing anyway?"
The can't even be bothered to comply with the laws to make their websites usable by people with disabilities.
"Why is medicine so Stone Age still?"
Because not enough people donate computing time to Folding@home ( http://folding.stanford.edu/ ) instead of leaving those other 1/37 cores run idle.
They also have version that runs on that expensive gaming graphics card you've got.
It's not much, but it helps me sleep better.
Why do you assume that all disabled people are that way because they made some stupid decision? Oftentimes, it's because some other person, like a drunk driver, made a stupid decision, but these people have to pay for it. But there's otherwise nothing wrong with them and there's no reason why they should be removed from the gene pool or made to suffer even more than they already are.
Also, you seriously misunderstand how evolution works. Removing a couple of obvious failures from the system doesn't necessarily produce a better gene pool. The genes for stupid behaviors are complex and varied, if they even exist at all, and many, if not most of us, are probably carriers. Furthermore, the stupid are themselves carriers for good genes. By only explicitly selecting the "good" and getting rid of all the undesirables, we not only fail to solve the problem, but we also destroy good genes as well as genetic diversity.
Social Darwinism doesn't work. Never did, never will.
The schematics aren't the problem here, because they are identical to the ones already used for people with full motion. The mechanics are what is making this difficult.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Don't forget that in a world where console manufacturers were forced to make their consoles accessible to people with disabilities, there basically wouldn't be a Wii (or PS Move, or Kinect).
Until a few months ago, a friend of mine was dating a girl who worked as a therapist in a centre that helped people recover after "life changing" accidents or surgery - in other words, people who found themselves suddenly lacking (or at least lacking the use of) an arm, a leg or more. They didn't take younger kids - that's a field that requires its own specialism, apparently - and the largest single category of their patients was elderly stroke victims. But they did get a fair number of teenagers and young adults - and "does this mean I can't play video games from now on" was apparently a common question.
I don't know whether they used modified controllers of the sort talked about in TFA, but they did have a few gamers on the staff (including the young lady in question) who compiled lists of games that could be played using one hand or with limited motor control. There were apparently plenty of examples on the "normal" consoles (PS2, PS3, Xbox, 360) and PC, but next to none for the Wii aside from a couple of very basic kiddy games. What they were after were games like the Forza Motorsport games or Bayonetta, which can be configured with assists and the like to allow for entirely 1-handed play.
So, in a world where developers were required by law to make their products fully accessible, it's likely that a large portion of current games wouldn't exist - along with an entire platform (the Wii). And besides, where do you want to define "accessible"? Playable with 1 hand? Playable with no hands? Wanting to make products accessible is a worthy goal, but there does, in any sensible world, come a point at which the opportunity cost is just too great.
For those that would like to see the actual hardware here is the PS2 and here is the X360. I hope he has released the plans so that when he does pass on someone can pick up the torch without having to reinvent the wheel, as these things do look to be seriously complex.
BTW if you are gonna be a dipshit and post old troll crap? Why not do it on one of the articles where there is plenty of fanboy bullshit and nerd rage and NOT on an article where poor cripples are afraid they are gonna lose the only way they have to interact with their friends and kids like normal folks.
It is called having class and style man, you should try it sometime.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
So, in a world where developers were required by law to make their products fully accessible,
Requiring full accessibility would certainly go to far and would simply be impossible in a general fashion, but it wouldn't hurt to much to force them to actually follow proper USB HID standards or publish the protocol their controller use, to at least make building third party controllers a little easier. Currently even something simple as an arcade stick that works on Xbox360 and PS3 is already a mess, both use USB, except hat Microsoft specifically locks out any unlicensed third party gear. PS3 in that regard is the most open console, as it actually supports standard USB HID controller, but even that kind of falls short, as it doesn't allow button or axis remapping, thus most regular USB HID controller will have their buttons all mixed up and be unusable.
and also due the dynamics of capitalism, someone else fills in the void, in this case it's Mr. Yankelevitz.
Didn't bother to read the article, did you?
Mr. Yankelevitz didn't recognize a profitable niche market and use his small-business agility to step in where the big guys couldn't. He's selling these controllers for the cost of materials and giving away his time, skills, and experience for free. He's not making money and has no expectation of a return on the time and effort he's expended, ever. It would be impossible for him to make a living wage manufacturing these devices at his current price point.
If he were to factory-build the devices and pay employees to assemble them, he'd be charging at least five times as much. (That's from Yankelevitz, not my own hyperbole.) The market knows a price signal when it sees one, and demand would fall accordingly. In other words, fewer people could afford these devices. The invisible hand (ouch) has no sympathy for the handicapped. That would be "the dynamics of capitalism".
Capitalism is perfectly willing to leave voids unfilled; this is basic ECON 101 stuff. Since I'm assuming that you haven't still got your course notes, here's the Wikipedia article on price elasticity of demand.
~Idarubicin