TECH REPORT
How esports professionals saved PC PERIPHERALS
We’re familiar with the trope by now: a nervous Swedish lad in a flammable-looking black T-shirt with his esports team logo emblazoned across it, arms folded confidently, endorsing a new mouse, keyboard, or gaming chair. Since peripheral manufacturers realised they couldn’t use partially dressed women to sell their gear any more, and slogans alone weren’t shifting units, they turned to professional gamers. And it worked.
It’s healthy to have a bit of cynicism about this sales tactic. In our heart of hearts, we all know that buying PC gaming gear endorsed by the pros doesn’t bring us any closer to pro standard any more than cracking an egg into a Hexplate pan makes us Gordon Ramsay. There’s something implicitly disingenuous about the whole thing. And yet, esports pros might have saved the peripherals industry. Because although there’s been some form of collaboration between pro players and manufacturers for decades, it’s only within the last ten years that the power has really laid in the pros’ hands.
Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, esports athletes were used as little more than box art and press release fodder, and by the end of the noughties we were headed in some incredibly silly directions.
It started as a well-meaning push for player customisation. Logitech started that ball rolling with the G5 mouse in 2005, the first customisable mouse to hit the gaming market. The all-conquering Mad Catz RAT followed, which let you dial in your preferred weight, width and length. The tacit message in all of these products was that tailoring peripherals to your desires made you a better player. A completely unproven notion, and one that’d be next to impossible to quantify – but it did at least come with a consumer benefit. Customisable gear allowed for more comfort and convenience.
PERFECT STORM
The perfect storm hit in 2009, when RGB lighting arrived in mice and keyboards. We first saw it in Roccat’s original Kone Pro mouse (hats off to the manufacturer for so many innovations over the years, incidentally). Suddenly our desktops took on a new complexion. Not only could the peripherals that sat on it be customised for function, but now for visual appeal too.
Some elements of that thread have continued into the present day, of course. Gaudy lighting has set up camp right at the centre of PC gaming, and we’re so accustomed now to tweaking both the look and feel of our gear that it feels like an egregious omission when we can’t customise our mouse’s lift-off distance. However, thanks to the pro collaboration movement, the features on our products are nearly always useful.
