Kickstarter suspends Canadians' Blood Sport, a gaming system that draws real blood

Want to build the coolest cooler? Learn to make potato salad? Help horses glow in the dark? Kickstarter is the perfect place for you to raise the funds to do so.

Want to create a gaming system that draws real blood from its players? Move along.

The popular crowdfunding site recently suspended a gaming system called Blood Sport, which draws blood from its players as their virtual characters lose blood.

Its Canadian creators, Taran Chadha and Jamie Umpherson, explained how it works:

“It’s stupidly simple. Remember the rumble pack? Well, nowadays most video game controllers rumble when you get shot in the game. That rumbling means that an electrical signal is being sent to the controller to let you know you’ve been hit. All we’re doing is re-routing that same electrical signal and using it to turn on the blood collection system.”

The object is to make blood-donation more fun. The game continues to draw blood from your arm into a sterilized donation bag until you reach the set blood donation quantity. (The game takes your age, weight and any preexisting medical conditions into account.)

Blood Sport’s creators were hoping to tour Canada with their system, essentially turning gaming events into blood-donation events as well.

"We are simply creating the gaming hardware that will allow us to get gamers thinking about more important issues while still doing what they love," Chadha and Umpherson wrote. “From there, we’ll partner with the appropriate organizations in both the gaming and medical communities to bring it all to life.”

Even though the game is programmed to only take a certain amount of blood, because of the risky nature of such a system, Blood Sport can only to be played in the presence of a certified medical technician.

Blood Sport is not intended for home use.

Kickstarter has yet to explain why it suspended Blood Sport this week, after it raised just over $3,300 of its $250,000 goal.

According to Kickstarter’s rules:

"A project may be suspended if our Integrity team uncovers evidence that it is in violation of one or more of Kickstarter’s rules."

(Maybe “blood” is the unwritten item on Kickstarter’s “prohibited items” list?)

“Perhaps the combination of real blood with the heart-pounding action of an intense video game is more than most people would want to deal with. After all, a lot of effort goes into making the blood donation process as relaxing and non-stressful as possible,” CNET’s Amanda Kooser speculated.

Would you be up for donating blood via video game?