Meet the Streamer Who Beats “Shadow of the Erdtree” with “Mind Control”

Whoever has gone online in the last month has probably heard about the new Elden Ring extension Shadow of the Erdtree. The first and only major update to one of the best RPGs of the last decade has caused a stir not only for its incredible gameplay, but also for its overwhelming difficulty that has even seasoned veterans of the “soulslike” genre reeling.

But for some, the extreme challenges of FromSoftware's latest release aren't enough, leading to impressive feats of ingenuity as the creators find new ways to make the famously difficult game even harder. One such player is based in the United Kingdom YouTuber and Drawing streamer perrikaryal, whose attempt to complete the DLC completely hands-free gave new meaning to the term mind game.

While many are currently struggling to win Shadow of the Erdtreemany grueling boss fights with a typical controller, the streamer, who stops by Perri on her socials and asks Rolling rock To hide her real name for her privacy, she chose to tackle the game using so-called “mind control” – that is, programming devices that recognize both brain activity and eye movements to control her game. In doing so, he hopes to present methods to broaden the scope of hands-free game design to make it more accessible in the future.

Perri's setup starts with one headset which measures the electrical activity in her brain, known as an electroencephalogram (EEG for short). The particular device he uses is made by Emotive, a bioinformatics company specializing in EEG devices and BCI (brain-computer interface) software. EEGs are traditionally used to diagnose epilepsy and can read brain activity to determine how patients' minds perceive stimuli.

“In terms of psychological research, it's good to see if someone has a reaction to something,” explains Perri. “So if you punch someone in the face, for example, you can see what happens [and] never.”

For games, Perri attaches 14 electrodes to her scalp that read her brain's reaction to specific thoughts to trigger cognitive activity, as well as a pair EEG headphones that record the pulses of her ear muscles to have a more immediate physical response to certain actions. They are then combined with a separate one eye tracking camera, which uses her eye and head movement to simulate the position of a mouse or joystick. Through a mix of Emotiv's BCI software and her own “junky” coding, Perri assigns individual in-game abilities to specific thoughts so she can use fine motion to drive her character and manage the game's camera while imagining actions like turning of a plate or the movement of a block. more complex actions.

“I have two different profiles,” he says. “One for boss fights and then one for climbing around the environment. He pushes a cube to avoid, spinning a plate [use a skill]. I'll imagine a little cricket jumping while I'm flexing my inner ear muscles so someone is a bit hacked, but that's when I want to attack.'

It took a lot of trial and error to get Perri this far. The streamer first encountered EEG machines while studying psychology at university and was amazed. Consumer friendly versions of the headphones they are not cheapbut the version he uses is readily available online and much cheaper than you would see in a lab or hospital.

Chronicling her experiments in YouTube streams and videos, Perri's story took off in earnest when she turned her attention to Elden Ringa game he hadn't even played the normal way.

Of course, all this required a huge learning curve. Of all the actions she has to regularly balance, healing her character is one of the most difficult, as Perri must consider becoming agitated or tensed to regain her health. As he quickly discovered, mimicking anger can easily be mistaken for the real frustration of repeatedly playing an extremely hard game. If Perri allows herself to get really down, her earpiece will take it as a call for healing. But to keep the order in Elden Ringit is necessary to maintain absolute control.

“You need to calm down. It's like mindfulness,” he says. “I meditate all the time and when I imagine, I'm not tense, I'm imagining that I'm tense.”

Mimicking tension without succumbing to it is a challenge in itself, but the game itself often throws spanners into the mix due to its design. When asked which of the game's boss encounters were the hardest to beat, he looks back at Elden Ring base game he won in 2023, where he repeatedly failed to defeat an otherwise moderately difficult enemy due to a particularly challenging element: The fight involved a camera constantly rotating around the fighter plane, which triggered images of the turntable on its head , leading to Perri constantly using the wrong inputs and leaving her disoriented.

Since that 2023 series, Perri's has made some upgrades to its setup. Originally, she needed a controller to control movement, but with the addition of eyes and gyro sensors to the kit, as well as ear buds to measure her muscle tension, she can now fully control everything, hands-free. But that could be pure luck Elden Ring it's viable for this method of play, other games certainly aren't.

During a month-long marathon of testing different games, Perri started having trouble navigating the menu. It could play online titles like bravewhich have enhanced features that require little tinkering with options, but something similar Counterattack it was too much because of the in-game purchases required at the start of each round. The hardest game, however, was Tetris – a notoriously easy game that, using its setup, became incredibly difficult. “When I play TetrisI think, 'spinning a plate' to move [pieces] left or, “push a block” to turn. So, it's very, very confusing. And Tetris it's very fast.”

But Perri's biggest challenge isn't actually the game, but rather convincing skeptical viewers that her efforts aren't fake — an argument she faces every day. During her flow before talking to Rolling rock, there were dozens of commentators jumping to accuse her work of lacking credibility. It's easy to see why viewers might take her claims at face value, though Perri tries to maintain transparency with eye-tracking data and real-time mapping of her brain activity on screen.

Representatives of Emotiv confirmed that Rolling rock that the implementation is both powerful and relatively simple compared to more sophisticated uses of the technology, and that Perri's exploits are authentic to the best of their knowledge based on conversations with the streamer. Although, even a direct statement from the company's scientists is unlikely to quell doubts.

However, Perri accepts there should be healthy skepticism about what she has achieved.

“Ninety-nine percent of people are really great and really supportive,” she says. “The main criticism I get is that I can't prove it and that I'm on the internet, which is true. What I see a lot is that multi-million dollar companies can't do it, so how does this random guy on the internet do it? First of all, they can. And secondly, it's different.”

But as a woman on the internet, much of what the streamer has to deal with is rooted in the internalized misogyny of those who believe she's simply incapable of the complex coding work she does or even plays. Elden Ring not at all.

“People will say my boyfriend is playing for me,” he says, “There's a boy under the table. Always under the table, which is very funny.”

For Perri, much of the criticism of EEG's playstyle also stems from a widespread misunderstanding of the psychology and science surrounding the technology.

“Science can be one of those things [where] People love to throw jargon out there and confuse everyone to sound smarter,” he says. “And there are fewer people who really care to know.”

As of this report, Perri has just beaten his third boss Shadow of the Erdtree, Messmer the Impaler, one of the toughest challenges for her. Beyond Elden Ringshe hopes to use her streams to spread awareness about the work that EEG can do for accessibility, but makes it clear that what works for her isn't a real solution for most people with disabilities.

“It's very difficult to use,” he explains, “And it takes so much dexterity just to put it on, even with your hands to put it on and adjust it. I'm very lucky that I don't have first-hand experience with not being able to play games conventionally, but I feel like it would be more stressful and more annoying.”

Perri points to a general lack of funding for research groups around accessibility as a key factor in the lack of meaningful breakthroughs in the field, and is cautiously optimistic about potential developments like Elon Musk's experimental Neuralink. For now, she's doing her bit by working informally with Emotiv to provide case studies and feedback that can be used to improve the functionality of their devices and hopefully open up new ways to help people with disabilities. Right now, though, the programs he uses aren't applicable to many neurological disorders, but the data can help.

“Having people know it exists is a really good goal for me,” he says. “I want to make it as good as possible so that maybe people can imagine a use case for accessibility.”