Kai’s Question #6 – Sweaty Hands and It’s Effects on My Gaming Experience

I have a medical condition since birth – it doesn’t interfere with my social and everyday life, but it does interfere with my gaming and technological life. From googling, I found out this medical condition of mine is called hyperhidrosis – excessive sweating on certain body parts; in my case, it’s on my hands. What’s worse, Brunei, the place where I live, is a naturally hot country, so my body, and especially my hands sweat very easily. Sometimes, I showered a multitude of times per day just to wash off the sweat.

I remembered when I was playing PS and PS2 back in the days when I was a kid. When I was holding the controllers, not even 10 minutes had passed, and my hands will be uncomfortably soaked with sweat. Constantly wiping them on my shirt or pants didn’t work, and even if I wash them, 10 minutes passed and the sweating will start again.

Not just limited to game consoles of cause, this annoyance emerged itself once again when I’m using a computer, or more specifically, when I’m required to hold the mouse, since I need an almost full contact from my palms in order to hold the mouse securely. However, I try to hold my mouse as loose as possible, so that there’s a small gap between the mouse and my palm. For some games which require heavy usage of the mouse however, this is close to impossible. There was one time when I was playing a game which require a lot of speedy flicking movements from my mouse, and when my hand slipped, the mouse humorously flew, yes, flew. If you’re wondering how I did that, it was because I was using a wireless mouse, which literally flew sky high due to my loose grip.

Furthermore, I also need to make sure to keep my devices clean at all time. Another embarrassing experience I had – there was a time I never clean my devices, and because of that, my mouse buttons jammed all of a sudden, only to realize that it was clogged with all my solidified sweat build up from several years.

In the later years, I find out that I was able to keep my sweating in check by keeping the room cool, and I’m talking about 18 to 20 degrees here, which is lower than even standard room temperature I believe. This was impossible to accomplish in my old house, since we were still using the older window air conditioner at the time, and additionally, I don’t have my own room too. I managed to keep my sweating in check more however after we moved to a new house, and got my own room, albeit a bit small.

Sometimes I couldn’t wait for the air to regulate though, and some of you might had seen my tweets complaining about how sauna-like my room was at times, causing sweating again. Recently, I pulled out even more tricks – bringing a portable fan into my room and blowing right into my direction, and also bringing a container filled with water so that I can dip my hands into it at any time. Although this, at this very least, somewhat solve my sweating issue when I’m in my room, there’s no way I can pull out these tricks when I’m on-the-go, which brings me to my next point – touchscreen.

Touchscreen became an iconic feature in the technology and gaming world. I’m sure those who are reading this post now, will have a smartphone or tablet at their possession. Even brands like Nokia or Sony Ericsson had also adopted the smartphone approach. Although my sweating makes it a bit hard to use them, in particular, it’s very difficult to swipe across the screen. As the backside of the hands are unusually smooth, and if you had seen me using my smartphone or tablet, you might caught me using the backside of my fingers (not sure how to properly call them, but specifically, the joints just above the knuckles) for swiping across the screen at times.

Admittedly, I rarely play smartphone games so I didn’t particularly mind. Although recently, I had been playing Love Live: School Idol Festival (a rhythm game, basically) and realized that when my hands are wet with sweat, the response of the touchscreen seems to weaken. I especially had trouble pressing consecutive notes in rapid rhythms. I know I certainly press them, but because the rhythms are so rapid, a portion of the notes ended up not registering. This also mean that my sweating also effects sensitivity on the touch screen, which mean I also might have problems with other games which might require rapid presses too.

So far the only game console I had which got touch screen features is 3DS, and I haven’t experienced that much problem with it fortunately. It probably has to do with the fact that a majority of the controls are still button-presses (that, and 3DS even has a stylus pen), unlike smartphones and tablets which rely more heavily on touch screen. Likewise, I would think there’s probably not much problem with the Vita either, with the inclusion of the button presses. Although I will be lying if I say I’m not worried if future developments in the gaming industry progresses in this touch screen direction…

If any of you had suffer from similar medical condition like me, and if you’re comfortable with sharing it – How are your experiences and how do you cope with it?

Kai’s Questions
Kai’s Question #1 – Revealing Figures
Kai’s Question #2 – Android Online Games
Kai’s Question #3 – Storing Anime
Kai’s Question #4 – Light Novels?
Kai’s Question #5 – Weekly or Marathon?
Kai’s Question #6 – Sweaty Hands and It’s Effects on My Gaming Experience