Image: Call of Duty official website
A blind video gamer and streamer surprised the internet after revealing his kill count on first-person shooter “Call of Duty: WWII.”
Born with a condition called retinopathy, TJ lost sight in his left eye at 5 years old. He then lost vision in his right eye when he was 14. Despite the circumstances, TJ’s love for playing video games continued, according to a report by Engadget.
TJ recently posted his standing kill count for “CoD: WWII” on the game’s subreddit with the title “10k kills without seeing the game” on July 26. At the time he had a total of 7,611 recorded kills. He planned to hit the 10,000 mark within a week or two from making the post. As of an Aug. 2 video on his YouTube channel, TJ has achieved 8,165 kills.
Fellow gamers were surprised when they read TJ’s Reddit post. Some of these gamers were impressed that a blind person could get a higher kill count and could play better than most people with good vision. TJ explained that he saw the battle ground through sound. He used the sounds of footsteps and gunshots to help him gauge how far a player avatar is. He claimed that he’s gotten so used to the system that he could also apply it to long-range combat and score a kill or two. He admitted it was difficult and said his system was more effective when avatars were closer.
The down side to TJ’s echolocation strategy is the inability to tell whether the approaching avatar is an enemy or a friend. So to help compensate, TJ also likes to spread a few grenades as a he walks around listening for a target to hit.
Reddit user u/theallsearchingeye joked that the “bad” players he encountered in-game might be people like TJ who had disabilities. TJ corrected this by saying that the number of disabled people in Call of Duty was extremely low because the game intimidated them. So the lousy players u/theallsearchingeye encountered were simply lousy players.
Image: Reddit/u/t_the_blind_gamer
Meanwhile, Reddit user u/cafishere found inspiration in TJ’s perseverance. The gamer explained that hevhad an eye infection so he’s had to play with only one good eye for the past few weeks. He found the experience “very difficult and frustrating,” so he just chimed in to tell TJ how impressed he was and promised to check out his game streams.
TJ created his post to spread information about gamers with disabilities and inspire others who want to play video games but are too afraid to try it. “I do my best to show everybody that even though people with disabilities that may not play video games as often as people without disabilities, we still do. Even though I cannot see, I still play just as good, sometimes better, then several of my subscribers who have sight,” wrote TJ.
On a side note, TJ mentioned in a comment by u/dank4us12 that he hopes video editing software could one day become compatible with screen reading software. This would let him upload compilations and shorter clips. Right now his only option is to upload raw footage, which often lasts for an hour or two, or do a live stream. Alfred Bayle /ra
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