Caleb Kraft on modifications, helping others, and what Sony and co. can do next.
Last week, I sat down to meet with Caleb Kraft from The Controller Project.
Talk about nominative determinism.
The Controller Project all started 10 years ago with a young boy named Thomas.
“I first heard about Thomas through my wife, who is a teacher,” Kraft tells me.
Kraft saw Thomas' story as a good opportunity to pull in some traffic.
However, when Kraft went to visit Thomas in his home, his attitude changed.
“I saw the reality of the situation [and] it really impacted me,” Kraft recalls.
“I felt a huge need to help in any way that I could.”
However, even the slightest of adjustments can make a big difference to a player’s experience.
This can be on a chair back, or even across a player’s leg.
Then, at the other end of the scale, there are the modifications that completely remap a controller.
Here, Kraft draws my attention to a design by engineer Akaki Kuumeri.
Kuumeri has designed a modification kit that allows a controller to be used with a single hand.
This, Kraft tells me, is one of The Controller Project’s most requested kits.
As well as Kraft, I also spoke to one of The Controller Project’s clients, Nate Passwaters.
Passwaters only has use of his left hand, and previously played games using a modified PlayStation 4 controller.
“We [started] hunting online for various adapted technologies that can be used for gaming.
After collaborating with UK based company OneSwitch, Tyler and his client were referred to The Controller Project.
When they told Kraft what they wanted to do, Kraft immediately “jumped on board” to help.
“This is just the beginning.”
It is evident that The Controller Project’s work is of huge importance to the gaming community.
I have volunteers all over the world.
But emailing back and forth with these volunteers and trying to maintain quality and stuff takes time.
“I think I could do 10 times more if I could do this full time.
But I can’t afford it…
I can’t afford to hire somebody even cheap to do it full time for me.
So yeah, I mean, that’s the hang up.”
Surely the likes of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo should be doing more.
This is something Kraft suspects carries over into hardware more than many may realise.
Does your thumb ever get sore from mashing the buttons?
What would be more comfortable - if maybe the buttons were moved over a little bit?'
