Streamer Perrikaryal recently gave an impressive display: playing the demanding Elden Ring by thought, without touching any joystick.
In recent weeks, streamer MissMikkaa has pushed the boundaries of what is possible by finishing Elden Ring with a dance mat, then completing two games at the same time (one with a controller, the other with a dance mat). We regret to announce to him that there is now an even more resounding achievement: as spotted by Jake Lucky in a tweet posted on January 23streamer Perrikaryal managed to play Elden Ring by… thought. A performance that even made Bandai Namco reactthe game’s publisher, who asked him how such a feat was possible.
With a master’s degree in psychology, Perrikaryal uses an electroencephalogram (EGG) to measure her brain activity and translate it into in-game commands (linking them to hotkeys for attacks). ” It records my brain’s electrical activities and habits, and can recognize the differences between when my brain is normal, like when I’m talking to you, and when I visualize an attack. “, she explains. She adds : “ It’s really, really simple, and you can add commands. But the more you add, the more complicated it gets and it can get confusing. »
Playing Elden Ring with his brain? It’s possible
Perrikaryal could have demonstrated with any game. But setting his sights on Elden Ring makes his feat even more impressive, considering the requirement of the action RPG developed by FromSoftware. In a short clip, we see her assure viewers that she does not use a controller or dance mat. Then, we can appreciate his fight against the Crimson Wolf of Radagon, a particularly fast and powerful boss. Playing by thought imposes greater latency (it’s less instantaneous than pressing a button), and this is an additional difficulty to take into account.
Asked by Kotaku, Cody Cao, a doctoral student in cognitive neuroscience, is not surprised to see such a feat: “ The EGG has very good temporal resolution, meaning neural responses to the demands of gaming take only milliseconds. If the neural responses corresponding to different actions exhibit multiple patterns, then algorithms can decode and differentiate between them. From then on, you can play with an EGG. »
He tempers all the same: the decoding of actions is always “ complex “, with an accuracy of 60 to 70% (against 90 to 100% when the action is done manually). “ Algorithms need a lot of practice to come up with an acceptable result (…). It’s like FaceID on your iPhone — it gets better over time “, he says.
This new experimentation of an interface brain-machine is reminiscent of that of Neurolink, which had a monkey play pong by thought — not without accompanying this test with sensationalist communication. Elon Musk tweeted, for example: “ The first Neuralink products, will allow a paralyzed person to use their smartphone by thought faster than a person with their fingers. Perrikaryal is much more modest: “ It’s not that amazing, it’s even simple to do. It’s been around since 1988. I’m not doing anything new, but I’m not sure it’s very well known. » Thanks to the exhibition ofElden Ringthe scene of great stories and great accomplishments, it will undoubtedly be a little more so.
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