Alienware built a gigantic 16-foot mechanical keyboard and mouse then convinced a DOTA 2 esports team to actually use it

pcgamer.com:

Those of you that were strapped into the back of your parents car when you were younger and taken on the yearly family road trip will remember a marketing technique as old as time itself. Take a regular everyday object, create an obnoxiously large model of one, and plaster billboards everywhere claiming it to be the «world's biggest x». Yes, it's a cheap stunt and yes, it was always somewhat disappointing, but you still begged your family to pull over, didn't you?

Well, joining the ranks of the world's largest chest of drawers and the world's largest toilet comes the latest marketing effort from Alienware, a truly massive 16-foot keyboard and mouse combination (via Tom's Hardware) that is supposedly the largest ever made. However, before your eyes roll entirely into the back of your head, it's worth pointing out that unlike the aforementioned examples these peripherals are actually fully functional, and to prove it Alienware asked its «Team Liquid» DOTA 2 esports team to play some matches using them against an actual opponent.

Apparently the idea to create this monstrosity of epic proportions was created by a simple thought experiment, ie, «what if we took the exact 3D-scanned proportions of an AW420K keyboard and AW720M mouse and multiplied them by a factor of 14?» The answer, predictably, is that you'd end up with some designs for a very, very big set of peripherals. 

But working out how to make them actually functional created a whole host of engineering problems the team had to solve.

The 3D printed keys themselves ended up measuring almost a full foot across with four inches of travel, which meant the team had to build giant mechanical switches out of PVC pipe with rubber bands used for resistance instead of a