SpecialEffect launches crowdfunding campaign Playing With Your Eyes

Crowdfunding isn't just about resuscitating genres, pandering to nostalgia, and making roguelikes. The charity SpecialEffect have just launched their first crowdfunding project, Playing With Your Eyes . They're looking to raise £5950 to purchase specialist eye-controlled equipment, which would help bring gaming to people with severe disabilities. Look at this way: Star Citizen probably has enough money .

"We set up, create, lend and support the use of specialist games controllers from our library of equipment," explains SpecialEffect CEO Dr Mick Donegan. "Everyone we work with is different. Some of the people we work with find it difficult or impossible to control parts of their body other than their eyes. In these instances we use computers which are controlled just by moving your eyes.

"The demand for this work is growing all the time, so we are asking the gaming community, who have always been enormously supportive of our work, to help SpecialEffect through crowdfunding. The Playing With Your Eyes project will help us meet this growing demand and enable us to purchase this very special piece of eye-controlled equipment in order to reach and help more and more people with disabilities to play games." With the equipment, SpecialEffect will be able to help gamers with locked-in syndrome, motor neurone disease, muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy, among other conditions.

To read more about the work SpecialEffect are doing, head over to Andrew Tsai's recent profile of the charity . The Playing With Your Eyes project will run until October 13th.

Phil Savage
Editor-in-Chief

Phil has been writing for PC Gamer for nearly a decade, starting out as a freelance writer covering everything from free games to MMOs. He eventually joined full-time as a news writer, before moving to the magazine to review immersive sims, RPGs and Hitman games. Now he leads PC Gamer's UK team, but still sometimes finds the time to write about his ongoing obsessions with Destiny 2, GTA Online and Apex Legends. When he's not levelling up battle passes, he's checking out the latest tactics game or dipping back into Guild Wars 2. He's largely responsible for the whole Tub Geralt thing, but still isn't sorry.