In late April, we announced our quest to construct a 2.0 version of our portable gaming kiosks, GO Karts (Gamers Outreach Karts)! Since that announcement, we’ve been working directly with a U.S. based manufacturing company to create a new GO Kart that is entirely and truly designed for our purpose. The end goal? We’ll be able to build way more GO Karts, way more efficiently – which ends up meaning way more hospitalized kids will have access to recreation!
In the short-run, revising our manufacturing process means we’ve paused GO Kart deliveries until we’re ready to roll out the new generation of units this coming Fall. For the time being, all funds raised in support of Project GO Kart are going towards our first batch of units as we move closer to construction. The wait however, will certainly be worthwhile. In this first batch alone, we’ll be able to build a larger quantity of GO Karts than we’ve ever built in the program’s entirety. In the next few years, we hope to construct many, many more GO Karts for hospitalized children. The time we’re now taking to improve our process will greatly contribute towards scaling the program.
With that said, we thought we’d share some updates on our progress! As of this blog post, we are starting work on the first physical prototypes / demo units of our new GO Kart. Once complete, we’ll be showcasing these units at a few game industry trade shows, including TwitchCon! These first demo units will be available in late July / early August.
Here are a few 3D renderings which illustrate how the GO Kart is shaping up! Note: all of this is subject to change. The color patterns on the GO Kart aren’t final either – these illustrations just exemplify various ways we might add a bit of “Gamers Outreach character” to the final units…
Behold! The new GO Kart! If you read our first blog, you’ll notice we made a few design edits between our concept sketches and this rendering. The image you see here represents the form factor we intend to manufacture this summer.
The new GO Karts will feature silent, 360-degree swivel wheels for easy movement within hospital hallways. Similar to our current units, GO Karts will also have an internal lift mechanism, which will enable the cart to be adjusted up and down to a patient’s bedside. Here’s a schematic representation of the lift function in action:
In this top-down view, you can see the GO Kart handle bars, which are used to help hospital staff easily move the GO Kart room-to-room. The handle bars also act as bumpers, which protect the gaming monitor from damage. In this example, the handle bars are painted orange for illustrative purposes…
The new GO Karts feature a work surface tray, console storage bin, and peripheral storage cubby for items like controllers, games, or VR devices. We’ll also be able to provide limited custom branding to each GO Kart, in recognition of sponsored builds. Here’s an image of the GO Kart from a front-facing view. In this image, you’ll also notice the color layout is a bit different. The entirety of the GO Kart can be painted, though we’re still tinkering with a finalized color scheme:
We’re incredibly excited to share our continued progress as we look towards building the new generation of GO Karts! The future of gaming is incredibly bright, and there are boundless opportunities for games to fill a role in hospital environments, especially as tools for therapeutic recreation.
If you have any thoughts, feedback, suggestions, or criticisms – we’d love to hear it! Having input from the community helps guide our build efforts. Feel free to drop a line our way via email at contact@gamersoutreach.org!
Interested in building a GO Kart for a hospital near you? You can start a campaign today through our fundraising platform, and construct a GO Kart for a hospital of your choosing! Don’t have a specific location in mind, but still want to support our efforts? General one-time donations are often used to help us fund the construction process, and provide GO Karts to hospitals in need.
As always, our deepest thanks go out to everyone who’s been a supporter of this initiative over the years! We’re so grateful to have the opportunity to serve, and hope you’ll be involved as we move towards making a greater impact in the lives of patients and their families! We’ll post more updates as we progress through the manufacturing process!