It's a Kickstarter project that got suspended by Kickstarter. If this project really comes true, any video gaming convention may just consider giving this contraption its own booth so blood donations can be collected if they want to do some socially responsible activity. Why? This game controller actually draws real blood from the gamer holding the controller when he/she gets hit during a game!

Called the Blood Sport: The Ultimate In Immersive Gaming, it gives more fun to the boring, and sometimes painful way of donating blood. Donors can donate blood by playing a video game that when they're hit blood is drawn from them until they are able to fill-up a bag (no sense of draining all the blood from them).

The set-up is a Nintendo Rumble Pak gaming controller with an Arduino brain. The developers, Taran Chadha and Jamie Umpherson, rerouted the signal that when the gamer holding the Blood Sport Controller gets hit, the Arduino board keeps the signal going to the Blood Collector and also monitor how much blood has been pulled so that it can power the collector down before the donor faints from lack of blood. Before a gaming blood collection takes place, they will input factors such as weight, age, and medical conditions.

Why such a project? Well, there's always a purpose which others might not subscribe to, but for those gamers with bleeding hearts, they can relate to the purpose of the Blood Sport Controller project:

Our goal is to develop a refined multi-player unit that can be taken across the country for blood donation gaming events. We are not a charity and we are not a game manufacturer. We are simply creating the gaming hardware that will allow us to get gamers thinking about more important issues while still doing what they love. From there, we’ll partner with the appropriate organizations in both the gaming and medical communities to bring it all to life.

Their funding goal is to raise CAD$250,000 to create a two-player controller as what they have developed for now is only for a single player. But why such a big amount? Apart from the controller, there are also medical devices and staff to manage the Blood Sport Controller project to bring across the country, which is Canada in this case , thus the amount is way higher than one would expect in buying a video game controller.

We don’t know the reason why Kickstarter suspended the project as they have not put out a statement. Before it was suspended, it has already raised CAD$3,390, but with the suspension, it might not be able to meet its target of going on a summer tour visiting gaming events.

Just imagine if something like this was made for airsoft, a portable blood collector and an arduino board connected to a vest with a BB hit sensor? That will surely make a lot of organisations that collect blood donations for emergencies happy with all those airsoft gamers donating their blood whenever they get hit.