Becoming a (more) disabled gamer

Everybody gets older. Everybody's body changes. Mine is no different.

When I was a kid, I didn't fully understand that there were things wrong with me; I thought everybody's hands hurt when they held a pencil for too long. I thought everybody's knees ached after walking a long distance.

As I got older, not only did these issues become more pronounced, but I also finally became aware that something was wrong. I wasn't normal, and I wasn't progressing downhill at the normal rate most folks do.

20 years ago I was a pretty good at gaming; I had some decent twitch reflexes, even for someone with arthritis.

Now, as I progress further into a state of brokenness that's getting worse faster than it can be diagnosed, I can't even play using a regular controller, let alone a mouse and keyboard.

Hell, I'm having a hard time typing this. The pain is bad today; It was bad yesterday, too, and it was bad overnight, keeping me from getting any decent amount of sleep.. And it's also keeping me from taking a cohesive thought that was the foundation for this editorial piece and putting it into a clever conflagration of a composition (and my brain is so fucking fried from pain right now I had to look up synonyms just to find the word composition).

Even my alliteration - assisted with some quick searching for synonyms - is shit today (actually, that one's pretty amusing).

What was I saying? Oh, fuck, right..

Assassin's Creed: Shadows comes out in less than a week, and I won't be playing it.. Despite it having exactly what I want in an AC title. Why?

Because I am now a more disabled gamer, and can no longer utilize the interfaces I'm familiar with.. Except for one.

The brief respite of time I get to attempt gaming has been relegated to my recent (and expensive AF) interface acquisition: My VKB HOSAS setup.

You see, I don't have the fine motor control I had a few months ago.. And even then it wasn't THAT good, but it was good enough to be able to play Black Myth: Wukong and actually beat some foes in a few tries.

My fingertips hurt like hell frequently, and at times (especially late in the day) doing something like pressing a goddamned key on a keyboard feels like needles are being shoved up under my fingernails.

I am not kidding there.

Alternatively, I frequently can't tell if I've pushed a button or not because of a sort of general numbness.

If all that sounds confusing to you, imagine how I feel about it.

So, I grip my twin sticks and have been enjoying 2 games: Star Citizen, of course, and Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries (I prefer Mercenaries over clans because it's more a "do whatever the fuck you want" type of game).

It has taken some time to get used to using the HOSAS in MW5: Mercs, and the effort needed to get those things working required researching on Reddit (that alliteration wasn't intentional) and a lot of trial & error.

Still, once I got comfortable with it, I found a bit of solace in being able to game a bit more (while I wait for SC 4.1 to come out).

I also feel incredibly down at not being able to play the games I want to.

We're hoping these new issues are temporary. I know at least some of my elevated pain levels are; we had to ditch one of my meds that was working more than we thought it was, which sucks, but treatment takes time and we'll find something that works and isn't going to kill me too fast. Still, I have to wait until fucking June for the next specialist, and then I'm going to be depleting my savings most likely just for a diagnosis (MRIs are fucking expensive, friends).

And now we come to a good point to emphasize before closing: The costs of being a disabled gamer are just insane.

Not only do I have expensive-ass healthcare and treatments, I also have to spend out the nose for the interfaces I need in order to even play.. And I'm lucky in that I can use a relatively common off-the-shelf input device that a lot of games are designed for intentionally.

I'm lucky. I have a great job, a side hustle (that morale patch at the top? That's one of my new ones I just released), and some money set aside for when shit goes all fucky. I can - at least to some degree - afford this bullshit (although I got lucky with timing this time around).

Not everybody does, however, and it's a real shame.

Being able to game is a great way to relief the sheer fucking sorrow at being a broken person, and there are a lot of folks unable to do so.

I hope that - if you're reading this - you're lucky enough to be able to game how you like.

fucking fin. I'll proofread & correct it later, I hurt too much now.