Most gamers have at least entertained the fantasy of going full Jesse Faden, tearing up the Oldest House in Control, and playing videogames with just your mind. Exceedingly few actually embark on a tech project that makes that a reality. Twitch streamer PerriKaryal has defeated many of FromSoftware's toughest customers using predominantly the power of her thoughts alone.
When I speak to Elden Ring]. 100% Rykard," she answers, going on to add that using mind control to dodge during the snake-face's second phase, "feels like flying."
"If you watch the live streams, I have a smile on my face the entire time."
Across beat Elden Ring using 'mind control'.
All of that said, it's nowhere near as straightforward as thinking about dodging and witnessing thy Tarnished instantly begin rolling all over the shop.
"There's a misconception that it's easy and that it's really intuitive because it's in your brain, it's your thoughts—and it's kind of the opposite," PerriKaryal says. The tech creator goes on to explain that rather than the steep cost of the EEG or the technical challenge of coding being the main obstacles, the reason you don't see more folks playing games with brain-computer-interface control schemes is simply "because it's really, really, really hard to do."
"It's really, really, really hard to do."
In order for the EmotivBCI software to PerriKaryal's thoughts, the brain activity has to be markedly distinct. Thinking thoughts that activate distinct parts of the brain often requires a layer of abstraction; in Elden Ring: Nightreign, PerriKaryal imagines pushing a block forward to dodge and a cricket jumping while also pulsing her inner ear muscles to attack. But, as you may already be aware, this multiplayer game requires far more than just those two inputs.
A decidedly different beast compared to Elden Ring, Nightreign features a battle royale-style shrinking ring. You'll blitz through foes in the hopes of harvesting enough XP to take on the bosses that lie at the map's centre. For PerriKaryal, 1000 ms ping from her EEG device complicates even basic co-ordination with her teammates. But Nightreign is a step-up for the 'mind control' setup in particular as there's also "way more buttons"; different button combinations conjure different skills, but as the EEG control scheme can't more than one input at a time, Nightreign is basically impossible to play purely via brain activity.
PerriKaryal's full setup can incorporate voice commands to manage trickier inputs, while eye and head tracking offer hands-free camera control. Still, watching PerriKaryal play Nightreign with this predominantly hands-free setup is no less impressive—especially as getting just one of these brain activity inputs to work even semi-reliably is far from a solved problem in the wider neurotech space.
"I've [spoken to] neurotech companies specifically about how the hell I've managed to get so many inputs working at the same time—they're like, 'We don't know how you've done this,'" the streamer shares, going on to add, "The answer is just sheer practice and willpower—and clearly, you know, too much time on my hands."
Brain Training
Besides time, PerriKaryal also has a Master's in Psychology. Alongside beating Elden Ring's bosses with just her brain, the streamer also shares her neuroscience knowledge with her Twitch audience through educational Just Chatting streams, taking things "trapped away in the steel box of rigorous academic institutions" and making them more accessible.
"I like to take news and analyse the psychology of it without forcing people to read academic papers," She explains, then jokes, "I read the papers and then I make it Girly Pop."
Despite what you may expect, the streamer describes her experiences on Twitch as being largely positive.
"Twitch is a very interesting platform, and you get a lot of good apples with [the] bad apples, as you do on all social media. And there is an opportunity when something's live for people to try and mess it up for you," she concedes, before then adding, "But my experience has actually been really, really positive, especially since I started doing tech projects like the mind control—people are really hyped for it in general! I really like the community that I built, because I think I've managed to drag people with similar interests into one place, and people are really nice."
"I read the papers and then I make it Girly Pop."
Indeed, during mind control challenge runs, it's not uncommon to see the streamer's chat flooded with encouraging messages to the tune of 'Go, Perri, go!' and 'You've got this!' Besides educational lectures and her headlining 'mind control' setup, the tech creator has also presented an interactive '3D stream' to her audience.
"Basically you can go around a [holographic] point cloud [representation of] me. All of the comments on Instagram [were like], 'Why is no one, you know, dive bombing into certain areas?' [...] There was, like, maybe 30, 40 people on the stream. There was no one doing that, because they were all very respectful. And that's kind of the community, and I really like it."
PerriKaryal streamed live from this year's TwitchCon Europe, playing Elden Ring: Nightreign at Bandai Namco's booth. The tech creator has also previously run 'mind control competitions' at similar in-person events.
For instance, during the long running annual LAN party The Gathering in Norway, PerriKaryal invited eventgoers to try their brain at a simplified Doom-like game.
She recalls this first tournament of thoughts, "People would just put on the headset— I taught them how to just get the one command fairly quickly, because that's not too tricky to do. It's not perfect, but it's doable! And then they tried the game a couple times, and whoever got the high score won a little headset that Emotiv gave me to hand out—which was really nice of them as well. And we were going all day, which was really, really, really fun."
She laughs when she re, "There was this guy that got really obsessed with it. I only let people have half an hour sessions, to be fair, but he just kept coming back—had to start again, but just kept coming back! He won, and he deserved it, so that was very, very fun."
Chipping In
The origin story behind both her streaming career and her 'mind control' setup began in her uni days.
"I got super into brain-computer-interfaces, because that's something I didn't do at uni. I just used the EEG to record data when people were scared or whatever it was [...] But BCI is really, really interesting."
For instance, a team at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research in New York have Cognixion's Axon-R headset is attempting to leverage AR alongside machine learning to give locked-in-syndrome patients a voice again.
"So I don't know about you, but I'm a little bit concerned about getting a chip in my head."
But alongside these scientific advancements that may genuinely help more people one day, BCI company Starfish have enjoyed big tech business buzz in recent years. I ask PerriKaryal about big tech's recent infatuation with so-called 'brain chips.' Though excited about the wider scientific field, she's also cautious, saying, "We're seeing [it a lot] with AI as well, [but] I think sometimes there's this big rush to do as much tech, tech, tech as possible, and not enough pulling back with safety. So I don't know about you, but I'm a little bit concerned about getting a chip in my head."
She's definitely not the only one. Still, BCIs continue to be a source of fascination for the Twitch streamer.
"And so I got super into that, and realised, 'Okay, you can make it record your pattern of brain activity. It can it. You can keybind it,'" she explains, before quipping, "And it just spiraled out of control."
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