When Your K/D Ratio is 20/450: How Bad is 9 Vision for Gaming?

As a hardcore gamer, having sharp eyesight feels as crucial as lightning-fast fiber internet. So when I found out my vision‘s aerial precision measured just 20/450, I feared it was…game over.

Turns out with some skillful maneuvering—plus an unrelenting passion for gaming—even extreme nearsightedness of 9 vision can‘t hold you back from victory.

Peering Into the World of Extremely Poor 9 Vision

For 20/20 normal-sighted folks, objects look crystal clear from a whopping 20 feet away. But with 20/450 9 vision, I can barely make out a large letter sitting right at 4.5 feet. Without glasses or contacts, even objects directly in front of my face turn fuzzy.

Here‘s a quick aim down my scope at vision measurement numbers to paint an accurate picture:

So in summary, my natural vision sits way off-target from a bullseye of clarity. Like fumbling for the controller without my glasses, everything in my field of view turns into an impressionist blur of pixels and colors.

When You Miss All the Headshots: Gaming With 9 Vision

Battling high ping and lag spikes already threaten your kill-death ratio enough. Combine that with extremely blurry 9 vision handicapping your view, and hardcore gaming feels like an impossibility.

Without correction, titles like Call of Duty and NBA 2K transform into a disorienting mess for me. But even maxing out the prescription on my gaming glasses to -9.00, some visibility challenges remain:

Long Range Targets – Distant players and environments easily fade into background chaos
Small Fonts – Reading tiny onscreen stats and texts strains the eyes
Dark Scenes – Low light levels increase glare and halos around objects
Fast Motion – Quickly moving targets become a pixilated blur

Yet while extremity nearsighted gamers face steeper obstacles, the passion for gaming persists. So what weapons and gear can help us lock focus and continue capping flags all the same?

Suiting Up With Assistive Gear for Competitive Play

Gaming with 9 vision may mean getting clever with accessories and settings adjustments to play on more level ground. But from blindfolded speed runners to paralyzed top-rank Fortnight players, competitive spirit pays no mind to physical limits if the will burns fierce enough.

Together with your eye doctor, consider these game-support tools:

• High index lenses – Thinner/lighter materials for heavy prescriptions
• Blue light glasses – Filter eye-straining light from screens
• Regression glasses – Separate distance/near vision correction
• Screen magnifiers – Personal or monitor-mounted options like Optelec ClearNote
• Screen readers – Text-to-speech software like NVDA allows gaming blind
• Display customization – Tweaking brightness, text size, color settings
• Speech recognition – Voice commands to control games hands-free
• Video game counselors – Orientation and mobility training for blind gamers finding workarounds to play

While extreme myopia imposes challenges, technology and human resilience keeps advancing the possibilities. And opportunities abound in the gaming industry for innovative minds to develop vision friendly games and new tools for accessibility.

Inside the Lens of Legally Blind Gamers

Given video games demand sharp vision for spotting targets and responding to threats, some find it hard to believe those with severe visual impairments play at all.

Yet blind gamers like Meagan Majors offer living proof that with adaptive gear and willful perseverance, even those with bare light perception can game competitively.

“I‘m legally blind, not completely blind. I have some usable vision to see colors, lights and shadows."- Meagan Majors, legally blind gamer and accessibility advocate

Majors streams playthroughs of The Last of Us using screen magnifying and text-to-speech software to compete at a high level despite blindness. Gamers like her shine inspiration that disability poses no inherent barrier to enjoying gaming as a recreational outlet or professional e-sports career.

Sure, 9-vision means I‘ll never ace Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege without glasses. But that hardly excludes me from gaming any more than mobility limitations exclude paraplegic Fortnite champ Sven Van de Wege from play.

When passion persists, workarounds emerge!

Could Excess Gaming Worsen Nearsightedness?

However, one ironic downside of gaming‘s addictive allure could detriment already poor vision if not careful. According to the American Academy of Opthamology, extensive use of handheld screens before age 10 likely exacerbates myopia progression.

Gaming too hard literally since childhood may have contributed to my current -9.00 high score! So moderation and eye health practices remain vital even once equipped to game safely with visual disabilities.

Fighting for Our Right to Game

With emerging advances in VR and AR gaming gear, I stay hopefully our radical technology age will keep pushing new ways to solve for limitations of vision loss and other disabilities. Open-world titles like Horizon Zero Dawn already fare reasonably well for low vision gamers with custom tweaks, and future innovations can only improve playability across the visual spectrum.

Toward that end, I love seeing charities like Gamers Outreach bringing portable video game kiosks into children‘s hospitals to uplift patients of all abilities. And programs helping place disabled gamers into college e-sports teams normalize barriers as no inherent obstacle to competitive play.

As mentioning legally blind gamer Meagan Majors beams:

“Gaming is for everyone. It‘s up to developers and hardware manufacturers to ensure disabled gamers aren‘t left behind."

So while my extreme nearsightedness brings daily frustrations, surrounding myself with reminders of human potential continuing to push limits comforts me. Now pass me that sniper rifle; it‘s time to pwn some n00bs!