Will We Ever Lose Our Thumbs?

This morning wasn’t the most splendid way to start off the work week, but, at least I’m still alive and earning a paycheck. Just shy of 8 a.m., I was using an apple corer and slicer and I would have to imagine this particular one was of the cheap Wal-Mart variety. Upon using my amazing strength to push down on the apple, the plastic completely broke from the blades and the downward force sent my hands crashing down to the table. The blades, of course, stuck in the apple, sticking out and giving me small gashes on the outside of both of my hands as physics took over and brushed my hands across them. It’s a trivial, mostly annoying injury for sure, but it got me thinking today, how it could have been worse and how I would cope with not having opposable digits. Obviously, not having thumbs would be the bane of any console gamer’s existence, so would you be inclined to agree the gift of thumbs is something we tend to take for granted?

Perhaps the only thing I’ve ever experienced in being “disabled,” was fracturing my arm, very near the growth plate in my right shoulder. Since it was high on my arm, my mobility in my wrist and such was never in any jeopardy. Still, I remember looking pretty goofy going to arcades in a coat in colder weather with my forearm protruding out through the gaps of my coat’s buttons. I received a few questions about my setup while playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but it was understandable – I wasn’t going to let a crack in my bone stop me from enjoying video games.

However, given where video games are heading, are thumbs still going to play a part in our hobby? I could obviously get by using a joystick and button setup without a pair of thumbs, but you really aren’t going to need them, it seems, with items such as Project Natal. Given the evolution of controllers and gaming, I’ve also noticed you really don’t see as many mentions of “numb thumb” or hand calamities that saw the release of specialized accessories and even gloves that aimed to relieve these ailments. I’m sure there are some people who don’t know when to quit and waggle their appendages down to the bone (I’m pretty sure we took a look at one such instance on the forum here one time), but you just don’t see magazine print ads selling such items anymore. Although, I do wish I had a pair of those gloves for the original Mario Party on the Nintendo 64 – winding up the toy Shy Guy burned a friction hole in a few members of my childhood gaming group and remains as one of my most crippling gaming injuries.

Obviously, I’ll survive, but, perhaps the injury leads me to take another look at the many things in gaming we have taken for granted over our time. What would gaming controllers look like if we didn’t have thumbs? It would have been quite the interesting evolution and, who knows, maybe we would have still arrived at the same point as Project Natal. Thumbless gaming just seems foreign to me as even the wagglacious Nintendo Wii still banks on people having thumbs for the most part and the Playstation 3 motion wand would be a whole new ball game if we didn’t have thumbs. I have nearly 30 years of gaming experience in these two bad boys and I know I’ve got many more in me – hopefully thumb-based gaming won’t go the way of the dodo, but that would be hard to believe for this generation. As it is, I’m amused at the premise of today’s children not knowing what cassette and VHS tapes are, but I suppose I better start thinking of ways to explain a time where video games didn’t synchronize directly with your brain.