Experts reckon our hands could become all kinds of horrifying if we keep up the gaming, so they created some cursed 3D projections to ruin your day.
If you’ve ever dreamed of gaming away to your heart’s content throughout the day without worrying about straining your hands from holding the controller too long, it looks like experts might have some good news for you. A prediction has been illustrated for how gamers’ hands might evolve in the future – but it’s closer to a nightmare than a dream.
The disturbing images have been produced by SlotsWise, a casino review website, in partnership with a product design agency, Cornelius Creative. The unexpected duo have generated 3D images forecasting what our hands could look like if we keep using similar controllers, and it is a strong ‘no thanks’ from me.
SlotsWise outlined their hypothesis based on the continuous growth in gaming’s popularity:
“With the human body not originally meant for gaming in terms of how our hands are shaped for holding controllers, what would they look like in the future if they adapted for optimum gaming performance?”
The short answer to their question? Cursed.
The main changes to the ‘gaming hands of the future’ are quite apparent, with two absurdly long index and middle fingers. They’re accompanied by shrunken, claw-like ring and little fingers, and a weirdly large thumb.
The lengthened fingers are proposed to accomodate to reaching further around the controllers, which some small-handed folk might already understand as a reasonable adaptation. Simon Cornelius, Managing Director of Cornelius Creative, anticipates an even greater need for further reach in the future, predicting controllers increasing their number of buttons over time.
Cornelius explains how this would result in more work for the thumb, index and middle fingers, therefore one can “expect an evolution of our hands to include a lengthening of those fingers, with fast reaction times”. Even if controllers don’t grow or add buttons, the continuous growth of smartphones is also noted as a potential instigator of growing fingers.
So if everything’s getting bigger and stretching further, why do the ring and little fingers look so underdeveloped? Cornelius anticipates that they will “recede and possibly become more claw-like to wrap around the controller”, allowing a more comfortable grip for hours on end.
However, rather than increasingly expanding devices and making them harder for our teeny tiny human hands to grip and manoeuvre, Cornelius notes that “manufacturers are responsible for designing controllers that lessen the impact on our physiology”. Popular gaming controllers are carefully crafted to fit in human hands, so it’s hard to imagine they’ll expand so much that our hands can’t keep up.
With many gaming accessories getting more abstract, ranging from virtual reality to potentially gaming on bananas, eventually holding conventional controllers may even become an issue of the past altogether.
this is the worst email I have ever received pic.twitter.com/E3BO5dgEx2
— Lucy James (@lucyjamesgames) April 12, 2021
I would like to think that gaming product developers will at least endeavour to continue providing sleek, ergonomically-designed controllers that take our physical limitations into consideration, rather than stretching our hands into total monstrosities. Please?
As great as hours of grinding at your favourite game without hand cramps getting in the way might sound, in my humble opinion it is not worth copping these horrifying hands of the future, so let’s hope they never become a reality.
