Quad Gods: The world-class computer gamers who play with their mouths. An extraordinary story of ingenuity and potential

Quite a tale from BBC News, about the “Quad Gods”. It’s a crew of quadriplegic computer game players, who use interfaces that respond to their various remaining abilities - their mouths, a flicked wrist, pads pressed with the sides of heads and of arms. Yet this became more than therapeutic.

The Quad Gods began to compete in serious e-Sports tournaments, particularly those themed around Fortnite, and place in top five positions.

As the BBC reports: “Their next goal is to place highly at a range of different e-sports World Championships next year. The Olympic Committee are strongly considering e-sports for the 2024 Olympics and, by securing a world ranking, the Quad Gods hope to qualify” (also, see this Metro story).

This passage shows the level of ingenuity involved, when Chris Scott (a paralysed ex-skydiving instructor) encounters Dr David Putrino in March 2019, in his role as the director of rehabilitation innovation at Mount Sinai:

The pair met at a time when Scott was struggling to cope. He missed being part of a team and felt a lack of purpose in his day-to-day life. Putrino had been recommended as someone who might be able to help. 

"We sat there staring at each other in silence for a little while," says Putrino. "And then I was like: 'Well, what do you like to do?'" 

Scott replied that he loved playing video games against others. Putrino was surprised. "That was me being naive at that point," he says, "because I'd never seen competitive gaming from someone as severely paralysed as Chris."

They loaded a basketball game called NBA 2K into a PlayStation 4 at the hospital. Scott's backpack hung from his wheelchair and he asked Putrino to reach inside and fetch a device for him. 

The device had a mouthpiece with a joystick and different sensors that could be sucked on or blown into. This was Scott's QuadStick and it helped him to play video games using his mouth. 

Putrino mounted the QuadStick on to the wheelchair so that it lined up with Scott's mouth. Then they began to play.

Scott moved the joystick with his lips. He could control the basketball players, making them pirouette, leap and throw, by puffing and sipping on the holes. "It was just incredibly dextrous and skilled," says Putrino. "And all of a sudden he was kicking my ass at NBA 2K."

The BBC is very much on the case with disabled gaming - see this documentary from Radio Four, blurb below:

There has long been a sizeable gap between the popularity of video games and their accessibility. Disabled gamers can find themselves thwarted by changes to controller settings, frozen out of storylines because particular motor skills are being tested, or stymied by sudden obstacles that require acute hearing or eyesight from someone who has hearing or sight loss.

But after decades of advocacy work by disabled gamers, that gap is beginning to close. In this documentary, blind gamer Steve Saylor hears some of the stories behind how gaming became more accessible.

The documentary includes contributions from Steve Spohn from Able Gamers on how a bag of rice proved instrumental in getting an innovative controller made and from Mike 'BrolyLegs' Begum, who uses his face to press the buttons and has become a top Street Fighter player. Steve Saylor always thought that he sucked at gaming - it turned out that gaming sucked for him.