---
title: "An Edible Controller Moves Gaming From the Screen to Your Gut"
description: "Australian scientists created a new kind of video game where you swallow a high-tech pill and win by changing your gut chemistry."
date: "2018-11-16"
modified: "2018-11-16"
authors:
  - name: "Dan Robitzski"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/danrobitzski.md"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/edible-controller-gaming-gut"
categories:
  - "Health & Medicine"
  - "Prosthetics and Devices"
tags:
  - "gastrables"
  - "medicine"
  - "the digest"
  - "video games"
---

# An Edible Controller Moves Gaming From the Screen to Your Gut

![Australian scientists created a new kind of video game where you swallow a high-tech pill and win by changing your gut chemistry.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/video-games-controller-gut.jpg>)
*\<em\>Image: Victor Tangermann\</em\>*

## Gamer Fuel

Just like "Back to the Future Part II" predicted, Gamepads are so old-fashioned.

A new pill acts as the controller for a new video game out of Australia’s Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. In "The Guts Game," two players will have anywhere from 24 to 36 hours to kill off a digital parasite by raising and lowering the temperature of their digestive systems [as measured by the pill, reports](<https://www.newscientist.com/article/2185512-a-computer-games-edible-controller-lets-you-play-it-with-your-gut/>) *New Scientist*.

## Eating for Two

Players are encouraged to do whatever they need to raise or lower their body temperature and kill off their virtual bugs: eat spicy food, drink ice water, go for a jog, or anything else.

When The Guts Game was presented at [Chi Play 2018](<https://chiplay.acm.org/2018/>), a gaming technology convention held in Melbourne in late October, *New Scientist* reports, the developers reassured the crowd that any temperature changes in the body were completely safe. After all, people eat spicy food and exercise all the time; there’s nothing about doing so for a new video game that suddenly makes it dangerous.

Presumably, The Guts Game’s version of cheat codes would be popping the pill before sweating your virtual parasite out in a sauna, but since you would have to buy each single-use pill, this sort of defeats the point.

## Race Against the Clock

Like all good things in the world, this game too must end. Players in The Guts Game are in an endless race against time, against whom there are no victors.

Win or lose the game ends the moment the controller leaves the body.

**READ MORE:** [A computer game’s edible controller lets you play it with your gut](<https://www.newscientist.com/article/2185512-a-computer-games-edible-controller-lets-you-play-it-with-your-gut/>) \[*New Scientist*\]

***More on gastrables: [Edible Tech is Finally Useful, is Here to Help You Poop](<https://futurism.com/neoscope/poopbots-edible-tech-gastrable.md>)***

## Author
Dan Robitzki is a senior reporter for Futurism, where he likes to cover AI, tech ethics, and medicine. He spends his extra time fencing and streaming games from Los Angeles, California.

### Author social links  
[Twitter](<https://x.com/danrobitzski>)

## More

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