The Red Bulletin August 2020 (US)

T H E D E P A R T U R E
Gamers Outreach
PLAYING IT SMART
Across the U.S., a nonprofit is giving video game kiosks
to children’s hospitals—and rebooting the fun.
Giving sick kids in
the hospital access
to video games
may seem like a no-brainer
strategy for introducing a
little fun into an otherwise
difficult experience. But it’s
not as simple as it sounds.
Zach Wigal, the founder
of nonprofit Gamers Outreach,
learned about those exact
challenges when he first met
with C.S. Mott Children’s
Hospital in his native
Michigan in 2009. At the
time, Wigal was a high school
student who was there to
discuss buying games for the
facility using funds that he
had raised during his second
annual Gamers for Giving
charity tournament.
“They were super receptive
but concerned about things
getting lost or stolen,” he says.
“It can be difficult to manage
equipment, which struck me
as a gamer and a donor.
Because if we buy them a
bunch of Game Boys, it seems
like only a matter of time
before we’d have to replace
items that have gone missing.”
While smartphones and
mobile gaming weren’t
omnipresent back then, Wigal
also discovered that many
hospitals only had a basic
networking infrastructure;
cell service could be spotty,
and Wi-Fi in patient rooms
often didn’t exist.
He got to work designing a
gaming kiosk on wheels, which
he named GO Kart. Made with
medical-grade materials, the
GO Kart is equipped with
wired controllers and a heightadjustable
monitor and can
easily be disinfected between
patients. The first prototype
included an Xbox 360 and
several games that could be
played offline. “The staff were
PHOTO PROVIDED BY GAMERS OUTREACH LIZBETH SCORDO
12 THE RED BULLETIN