MORENCI, Mich. — Local gamer Kate Gallegos has let the faulty control stick of her Nintendo Switch Joy-Con dictate what games she plays for the last week.
“Luckily, I don’t even care about what I play nowadays,” said Gallegos, watching her console scroll through the home screen. “I just set the controller down and wait to see what it stops on. Hopefully nothing first-person, since the drift keeps forcing me to stare at the ground.”
The drift has become a persistent issue for the Switch console, with gamers like Gallegos seeking creative ways to manage the problem.
“Look, if after all this time Nintendo isn’t gonna do anything about it, I might as well learn to live with it,” Gallegos said. “I’m definitely not gonna try and make it worse by cleaning it or cracking it open to shove cardboard in there.”
Rather than seeing Joy-Con drift as a defect, Gallegos has chosen to think of it as a useful “auto-select” feature for indecisive gamers.
“It’s not like I’m going to have any better idea than random chance will, so why not let fate and poorly made peripherals dictate what I play?”
At press time, Gallegos was seen trying to terraform her island in Animal Crossing, but digging repeatedly into the wrong spot.