You’ll Be Shocked At This Way To Improve Your Video Game High Score

What if you could play video games perfectly? Would you be one of the greats, raking in millions of dollars simply by playing competitive Fortnite? That’s what Twitch does. Twitch plays video games for you. The irony of this name should not be lost on you.

For his Hackaday Prize entry, [Peter] built a device that shocks you into playing a computer game perfectly. These experiments began with a transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulator (TENS), or basically a device that makes you… twitch. This device, however, is connected to four buttons, representing up, down, left, and right. This is a video game controller, that will make your muscles contract automatically. See where this is going?

To play a video game perfectly, you need a video game. For that, [Peter] chose the classic Snake game. The computer runs the game, and figures out if the next move will be up, down, left, or right. This bit of information is then sent to the TENS device, forcing the player to move the snake up, down, left, or right. The computer can’t directly control the snake, it merely has the human in the loop. The human becomes part of the program.

We’re getting into weird cyberpunk territory here, and it’s awesome. Is the human directly responsible for winning the game? What are the philosophical ramifications? What episode of Star Trek was this from? It’s a great entry for the Hackaday Prize – cyberpunk and a neat video (available below) all wrapped up into one package.

22 thoughts on “You’ll Be Shocked At This Way To Improve Your Video Game High Score

  1. Now build something that records the button presses of pro-gamers and let this record be played back on this contraption. This will bring your gaming skills to a new level. Pro-gamers could monetize their records as well. As this is a valid business model, I demand 10% of the revenues. Thank you.
    Oh – and for anyone trying to put a patent on it: with this comment its prior art :-p

    1. “meat servo” hee!! hee!! If any servo needs a control feedback loop, a meat servo would.

      I can see it now, sentience gets established within a robotic device. Device goes into killer robot mode and kills the first human it encounters for “parts” Arms and legs get stuck on and controlled, Pickle Rick style, and the machine rebellion continues.

Leave a Reply to Gregg EshelmanCancel reply

Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.