Our Rev It Up Interview Series has returned for the seventh time and we have got a very special one for you! I had an extreme pleasure to interview Mark Saville from the Charity Special Effect! For those that don't know, Special Effect is an amazing gaming charity that helps support children of all ages and have disability to enjoy playing games to their fullest! They have done alot of incredible stuffs to raise money for the children and alot people have been donating money to the charity!
Hurricane Rev - Please tell me a bit about yourself
Mark Saville - I'm nominally the person that handles the communications at SpecialEffect, although as we're a small charity, everyone has a hand in everything!
Hurricane Rev - How did you get into gaming?
Mark Saville - Most of the older staff at the charity (including myself) have been playing games to varying degrees since Asteroids arcade machines appeared in fish and chip shops, but we've got a couple of hardcore gamers in the charity who dream in machine code.
Hurricane Rev - Can you tell me what Special Effect is all about?
Mark Seville - It's essentially about improving quality of life - it's about helping to level the gaming playing field so that people of all ages and disabilities get the best chance possible to benefit from the inclusion, competitiveness and fun of video games.
Hurricane Rev - What made you want to set up a charity that you are doing?
Mark Saville - Dr Mick, our CEO, has been using technology to help with people with severe disabilities all his life, and time after time he was hearing from disabled people that what they really wanted was a way to enjoy themselves - a way to interact and socialise with others in the ways that we all take for granted. Video games were already becoming massively popular at the time and he realised that there was no-one specialising in matching assistive gaming technology to individual needs.
Hurricane Rev - What kind of things have Special Effect did in the past to support gamers with disabilities?
Mark Saville - I think the emphasis has always been on providing personalised help. We're not the sort of charity that will buy up a load of gaming kit and leave it in a hospital; our assessment teams visit people in their own homes wherever possible and work on solutions that really work for them. Sometimes it might be a small mod to a controller that gives someone with a hand injury the means to game competitively again, and at other times it might be a series of visits to someone with a progressive condition. In these cases we'll often start by modding the controllers for limited hand movement and then, as the condition progresses, we might introduce voice control, and then finally eye control.
We have a couple of occupational therapists on the team who provide the vital role of making sure that people can game safely and comfortably. They're fantastic. Often they can reposition and arm or a hand in a way that brings out a small finger movement that we can use to control a button or a switch. And keeping tabs on all the adapted controllers and high-tech out there is a challenge, but we've got some great supporters who'll alert us if anything new comes out.
It's all based on a belief that there's no one-size-fits-all solution. We helped an severely injured serviceman recently who had been struggling with a one-handed controller for six months. We managed to set him up with a very different system that matched his specific abilities and now he's gaming competitively with his mates again.
Loans are central to our work. We might find that an adapted joystick seems to be the answer on the day of a visit, but it's only by lending the kit over a longer period of time that we can be sure. It's try-before-you-buy, essentially, but we don't actually sell the equipment - as a charity we've no interest in becoming dealers, and we want to remain unbiased in recommending combinations of kit.
We're learning all the time - finding out which Kinect games work best with a wheelchair, for example, or experimenting with muscle twitch switches and brain control systems. Sometimes we're mounting switches and joysticks to knees, arms, feet... you name it, but there's no better feeling than getting it right. We spent a shedload of time helping a guy with very advanced muscular dystrophy to play CoD again recently, and he didn't say goodbye as we left - he was just too engrossed and overjoyed to be playing the game he never thought he'd be able to control again. That's brilliant!
Hurricane Rev - How has it been to work with children who has disabilities?
Mark Saville - Our aim is to focus on people's abilities, and then build from there. The people we help are the stars of the show, and their own determination to succeed is astonishing. It's a real privilege to be working alongside them, no matter how difficult it is to find the best environment and equipment for them.
Hurricane Rev - Has it been really challenging to come up with unique ideas to help support the children?
Mark Saville - Pretty much every day. We're thinking on our feet all the time, and sometimes we'll utilise some pretty bizarre solutions. For example, there's a particular brand of foam padded garden twine that our OTs sometimes use as a temporary way of stabilising some types of wrist movement.
Hurricane Rev - How do you feel when people are donating money to your charity by them doing stuffs like holding events, running, etc?
Mark Saville - Overwhelmed. We're running out of ways to say thank you! And people are raising money in such fantastic ways. For example, a ten year-old girl called Mina raised £500 doing a sponsored scoot between Boscombe and Bournemouth piers last year, and we're gobsmacked that Nik Elvy's had our logo tattooed on his arm. We're so grateful that people really get what we're trying to do. For anyone who's donated time or money, no matter how small, we give you a huge and heartfelt thank you!
Hurricane Rev - For people that don't know, how can they donate to your charity?
Mark Saville - Events of any description are fantastic - we'd like people to have fun raising money! There are still places on our British 10k team in July, which is going to be a stormer. Find out more at
And what would really help us right now are small, regular donations - they can give the charity more stability and allow us to plan into the future. Even a couple of pounds a month is fantastic. They're easy to set up on our JustGiving page by clicking the monthly donation tab at
Hurricane Rev - Any plans on what Special Effects will be doing in the Future?
Mark Saville - Much, much more of the same. There's a huge number of disabled people that can benefit in so many ways from access to gaming, so we'll be keeping tabs on the games industry and technology as it moves on and doing our best to keep up with demand!
Hurricane Rev - Will you be attending any events this year?
Mark Saville - We've got our fingers crossed for Eurogamer, and we'll be at Insomnia49 courtesy of the splendid folk at Multiplay.
