The manufacturer Alienware has come up with a particularly clever advertising campaign: They 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 match against a coach.
How did the hardware come about? The keyboard and mouse are based on the mechanical Alienware AW420K keyboard and the AW720M gaming mouse. The predecessor mouse could be thoroughly tested by MeinMMO. Alienware scanned the hardware and subsequently scaled it up to a 14:1 ratio. The keyboard is 5 meters long and just the space bar weighs 9 kilograms.
The usual mechanics of mechanical keyboards surprisingly do not work with this giant keyboard, and a custom technology had to be developed: Under the keys of the keyboard are PVC pipe shafts, which in turn are connected to a real mechanical switch. A rubber band mechanism ensures that the keys snap back and do not 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 works, the DOTA 2 esports team “Team Liquid” had to play some matches against a real opponent.
It is not surprising that it takes a whole team to operate this mouse and keyboard. It takes 2 people just to move the mouse and press its buttons. The other three team members then had to deal with the keyboard.
The first attempts against bots in Dota also went pretty badly at first. But after several attempts, the team managed to secure a victory against bots.
After the exercises, it was time to face a real opponent: The team had to compete against DOTA coach Blitz. However, Blitz was given several disadvantages for fairness:
- Without glasses.
- With significantly reduced resolution.
- Playing with 1 meter distance from the monitor.
You should definitely watch the entire match in the official video. Because it is very entertaining to see the team trying to cope with the big keyboard.
More large keyboards: Two YouTubers have also built a special keyboard. Because it is almost as large as a room and actually works. But typing this way becomes a real challenge.
