The manufacturer Alienware has come up with a particularly clever advertising campaign: it has developed a huge gaming keyboard and a gaming mouse. With this hardware, “Team Liquid”, which is considered the third best team in DOTA 2, had to play a game against a coach.
How did the hardware come about? The keyboard and mouse are based on the Alienware AW420K mechanical keyboard and AW720M gaming mouse. MeinMMO was able to test the predecessor mouse in detail. Alienware scanned the hardware and then scaled it up to 14:1. The keyboard is 5 meters long and the space bar alone weighs 9 kilograms.
The usual technology of mechanical keyboards, unsurprisingly, does not work with this huge keyboard and a new technology had to be developed: PVC tube shafts lie under the keys of the keyboard, which in turn are connected to a real mechanical switch. A rubber band mechanism ensures that the keys spring back and don’t get stuck.
Team Liquid first plays against bots and then against a real opponent
What did the team have to play? To prove that the hardware actually works, the DOTA 2 esports team “Team Liquid” had to play a few matches against a real opponent.
It should come as no surprise that it takes a whole team to operate this mouse and keyboard. The mouse alone requires 2 people to move it and press the buttons. The other three team members then had to work on the keyboard.
The first attempts against bots in Dota went quite wrong. But after several attempts, the team finally managed to win against bots.
After the exercises, it was time to face a real opponent: the team had to compete against DOTA coach Blitz. However, in fairness, Blitz also came with several disadvantages:
You should definitely watch the entire match in the official video. Because it’s very entertaining to watch the team try to cope with the large keyboard.
More big keyboards: Two YouTubers have also built a special keyboard. Because it’s almost as big as a room and actually works. But typing this way becomes a real challenge.
YouTubers build the world’s largest working keyboard – said to make you 97% slower when gaming