When you watch Aaron Soetaert playing Call of Duty: Black Ops III during one of his livestreams, you may not initially notice anything out of the ordinary. Livestreams of people playing video games and doing well are pretty much part and parcel of video streaming sites like YouTube and Twitch. One would have to have a pretty interesting gimmick to stand out from the crowd.
Aaron’s YouTube channel is named aaron_1handedgamer. He plays modern first-person shooters (FPSes) with only one hand. But it isn’t a gimmick. He’s not playing video games with one hand as a way of showing off; he’s playing video games with one hand because he only has one hand to play video games with. And it’s technically his non-dominant hand to boot.
The aaron_1handedgamer channel has more than just a library of his gaming exploits, of course. Aaron is quite the outdoorsman, taking up basketball, golf, surfing, and even rock climbing, and he shares videos of himself doing so. He also shows his viewers how he maneuvers around an Xbox 360 or Xbox One controller with his one hand, as well as more light-hearted clips showing him doing more mundane things around the house. The videos he has up are entertaining, informational, and in many cases, more than just a little inspirational.
Have I mentioned that he does ALL this with one hand?
The story surrounding the loss of his right arm, which is missing from the shoulder, is pretty horrific. The story of his recovery and new zest for life, however, is quite amazing. My Digital Crack podcast mates and I recently had a chance to interview Aaron for about an hour, and we went over the high and low points of his ordeal. At the end of the interview, we all came away quite impressed by his candor, his positivity, his appreciation, and most of all his humility. He is very open to talking about his experiences and how he overcame his disability.
Aaron is a veteran of the second Iraq War, having served in the Air Force from July 2007 to June 2008. He returned to the United States a newly-minted adult, having turned 21 while on tour, physically unscathed but suffering from some of the post-traumatic stress that war veterans suffer. His way to cope back then, he will tell you, involved alcohol. During one particular alcohol-fueled night with friends, he ended up being the passenger in a vehicle being driven by a friend who was drunk. The resulting trip, “the ride of my life,” according to Aaron, nearly ended his life.
He recounts the events leading to that accident with the kind of hindsight only learned after a traumatic experience. “I don’t mean to, you know, come out with this in the negative, but alcohol was a huge factor in how I lost my arm”, he recounts. “I got into a vehicle with a guy that…if I was sober that night I would have never gotten in the vehicle with that man. I would have made a better choice.”
In addition to having his right arm torn off when the vehicle lost its passenger-side door, he suffered multiple broken bones on the left side of his body, torn ligaments on his left knee, and brain swelling, the result of the vehicle slamming into a tree and having his body slammed into a wall.
His recounting did have one wild anecdote: one of the paramedics who responded to his accident knew him. “He was my wrestling coach in high school, who always picked on me, always gave me a hard time, was the first paramedic there and told everyone there, ‘I am not letting this kid die.’”
He was in a medically-induced coma for two weeks after the accident while doctors worked on reducing his brain swelling and trying to put together all the smashed bones. A metal rod was inserted into his left arm from the shoulder to the elbow because his upper was too shattered to mend naturally. The arm is functional, but is at half strength at best. His knee was surgically repaired, a metal plate keeping it in place as well. The worst part, of course, was that he awoke to all of this damage and all of the pain that accompanies it. As a person who has lived through a horrific accident, let me tell you: that pain is beyond excruciating. On a pain scale of 1 to 10, I would comfortably peg that kind of pain at about 615.
Aaron was an avid gamer prior to his accident. His friends knew how much he loved games and didn’t want to tell him after he awoke that he lost his right arm. “They were literally, like, shaking. They were, like, ‘Dude, we did not want to tell you [that] you lost your arm, because we knew you were gonna freak out’,” because they knew of his love of video games and gaming.
After all the physical therapy and healing, he would be wheeled back into his room with nothing to occupy his mind. Soon enough, he tried to get back into gaming. At first, he found it immensely frustrating. Obviously, attempting to play modern video games, with their myriad button and trigger combinations, is very difficult to do with only one hand. His friends, eager to get him back into gaming, went out and bought him a Ben Hecks one-handed controller that allows for analog control using a gamer’s knees. He fired up Call of Duty, excited to get back into video games – and broke the controller two days later in frustration. “It was a $300 controller, and I ended it up breaking it,” he says.
Convinced that gaming was no longer possible for him, he stopped playing for five years. During that time, he found more physical endeavors to pass his time. As a sports nut in addition to being a gaming nut, he took up golfing and swimming, rediscovering his love for athletics. “I focused on athletics in trying to get healthier that way.”
Gaming would not stay completely out of his system, however. His fiancee’s son, a gamer himself and quite awesome at it to boot, reintroduced him to video games with Call of Duty: Black Ops II. Actually, he dared him back into it. “He freaking hands me the controller and says, ‘Well I dare you, I bet you that you can’t game.’” As the gamers say, challenge accepted!
“I took it on from there,” Aaron continues. “I pick up the Xbox 360 controller and I started holding it every which way, I turned it every which direction. I held it upside-down, I held it left, I held it right, I held it in my mouth, I held it on my knee…and then finally…I don’t know if it just by pure luck…but I held it with my palm on the left analog [stick], my thumb on the right analog, and just kinda held it sideways, and I was able to get it down.”
He uses his pinkie to aim and his forefinger to shoot. To maneuver with both analog sticks, he essentially learned how to move his thumb independently of his hand, to the point where he can move the left stick with his palm while SIMULTANEOUSLY moving the right stick with the tip of his thumb. As a test, I attempted to do the same using my vanilla Xbox 360 controller. It took about 5 minutes, but I did eventually manage to regain feeling in my thumb.
Of course, it has taken tons of practice to get to the point where he can play Call of Duty: Black Ops III even passably. Currently, he can absolutely annihilate me in MP play. Fine, I’m not a very good FPS player, but I figure I could at least hold up against him. Nope! I get trounced by a gamer who snipes me using his pinkie! I take solace, however, in the fact that I am far from alone.
The controllers he uses are completely unmodded, save for grips for his analog sticks. The grips, offered to him by one of his sponsors, Phatal Grips, help him grip the sticks a little better with his palm. Plus, they do look quite stylish. Adding to the style is a custom skin made by his other sponsor, PWN_Apparel. It doesn’t enhance his game, but it’s nice. Past that, the only issue he ever has is with the B button on the Xbox 360 controller, which is the farthest for him to reach. The Xbox One controller, he says, is a little more uncomfortable with its analog stick placement, but overall he prefers the asymmetric layout of the Xbox controllers’ sticks for his play style to the more uniform layout on the Playstation 3 and 4 controllers.
His ability to play – and excel – at video games is pretty amazing, but it’s his ability to take on any challenge, and often succeed, is what amazes the most. Along the way, he has picked up quite a following, including over 2,200 subscribers to his YouTube channel. In his videos, he shows he can have some fun with his disability, even giving pointers on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with one hand. But the thing he loves the most about his videos is how he helps inspire others.
I asked him if he knew of any specific instances where his videos and his message of perseverance have inspired others with disabilities. It’s then when he truly gushes:
“I get messages every day. Every single day. And those are the kinds of messages that…ah, man…
“I’ve always wanted to inspire people, you know, and just show people that…you can get out of a situation and make things better…and come out of things in a positive light.
“When I lost my arm, I…I didn’t understand how strong it was gonna be for me, but now I do because I…every day I wake up to messages of people that are just, like, ‘my son, he was born without an arm, or he was born without a hand, and…I’m gonna show him your videos. He’s gonna get inspired by you. He’s going to change the world because of you.’ I get messages like that constantly and it…it puts the biggest smile on my face.”
Later, he says, “Honestly, I don’t do this for ‘Thank Yous’, I don’t do it for acknowledgements, but…it always feels good to see somebody be able to, like, just be inspired.”
If you are interested in seeing more about Aaron and his message, check out his YouTube and Facebook pages. As a former accident victim who found solace in gaming, I can say he has inspired me. I gotta work on my jump shot, tho…
Please Check out and follow Aaron on his social media.
https://www.facebook.com/Aaron1handedgamer
https://www.instagram.com/aaron1handedgamer/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlGtSagRYo8
