Creative's Fatal1ty Gaming Headset is endorsed by professional gamer Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel.

Microsoft's SideWinder laser mouse has tracking of up to 2,000 dots per inch (DPI) and three levels of sensitivity, which can be adjusted on the fly.

No professional baseball player would consider fielding with a brand new glove without breaking it in first, nor would a tennis player play a tournament using a racket with dead strings, or a hockey player square off at center-ice with a cracked stick. The same holds true for cyber-athletes who compete for cash, prizes and glory in professional video game tournaments.

To these top-tier players, good equipment can mean the difference between first place and going home empty-handed.

The rise of competitive gaming has spawned organized leagues and tournaments that draw international competitors and offer purses worth thousands — and in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Many video game peripherals manufacturers are now taking aim at the "pro gamer" market with high-performance equipment, including Razer, SteelSeries, Ideazon and Fatal1ty (Creative Technology's brand endorsed by celebrated cyber-athlete Jonathan "Fatal1ty" Wendell).

Logitech's G15 gaming keyboard has a small built-in LCD "GamePanel" view screen that displays system and game-related information.

However, ask cyber-athletes what gear they prefer and it's less about brand names and more about equipment that's reliable and comfortable. No one product stands out, and athletes typically choose based on personal preferences and physical traits.

Elaine "Lainey" Kim competed as a member of a Counter-Strike team called Invincible at the 2007 World Cyber Games Canada Finals. The petite 24-year-old uses a symmetrical laser mouse from Logitech, which she prefers to specially designed gaming mice with "grooves and warped shapes" because she says the streamlined design allows her the control she needs in spite of her smaller-than-average hands.

Mouse pads aren't as important as they once were, since optical and laser mice can work on most surfaces. But Kim points out that they're still useful for players looking for consistency, and for recreating the conditions gamers play with at home or in practice when a player is at a tournament — seeing as they can't bring their desks with them to competitions.

Ideazon's Fang Gamepad can be used by right- or left-handed players.

"[Players] may have problems with the texture or feel of the desks at the tournaments, or even with any cloths that might cover the desks," she explains. "I have found my mouse pad very useful in approximating the mouse sensitivity I use at home; one full horizontal sweep on my mouse pad needs to correlate to about 180 degrees of rotation in the game. This helps me to simulate the conditions I play with at home, and it's very important to get the feel right in a reaction-and-aim-based game." And of course audio-visual equipment is important too, especially for first-person shooters.

"A good set of headphones is absolutely critical in localizing the enemy and to determine what they are doing," says Kim. "And finally, a quality monitor with good colour contrast and fast refresh rate will ensure that targets are seen easily and on time."

Console quirks

Reclusa Gaming keyboard 1.jpg: Microsoft teamed up with gaming peripheral maker Razer to design the Reclusa keyboard, which has blue backlighting to highlight the letters on the keys in darkened rooms.

Console gamer Nelson Triana, who is regarded as Canada's top-ranked Halo 2 player, performs maintenance on his Xbox controllers before every tournament. He uses a can of compressed air to clean out dust particles or loose fragments that may have gotten stuck inside the buttons or joysticks, and wipes down the controller with alcohol swabs or rosin (a white powder used by rock climbers) for better grip.

Making physical modifications to controllers is illegal according to the rules of Triana's competitive circuit, Major League Gaming (MLG). However, he does leave his Xbox Live Communicator and memory card in his controller for tournaments even though they aren't required pieces of equipment.

"I leave them in my controller because of weight issues. If I take them out, the controller feels lighter and throws me off slightly," he explains.

Other aspects about a controller can throw the athletes off too. Some are equipment-based, and some are simply superstition.

MLG athlete Justin K, for example, will only use brand new black "S" controllers (the slimmer, second generation Xbox controllers). Others prefer the larger first-generation "Duke" controllers. Some even transplant pieces from one into the body of the other, if the rules of the league they play in allow it.

Among pro gamers, controller thumbsticks are replaced every month — or sooner in some cases — as the rubberized tactile bumps wear down.

"Sometimes if your controller doesn't feel right, it throws your game off. The same way when you wear a pair of cleats that don't suit your foot," explains MLG athlete Jordan Courchesne.

While equipment can make a good player great, skill is still the most important asset on the pro gaming circuit.

"Yes, having a control [scheme] set up for you and made especially for you might help," says MLGer Jordan Kimmel. "But plainly if you're bad, you're just bad — and your super controller can't save you."

Gaming peripherals

SideWinder gaming mouse

For gamers who like to obsessively tweak the settings, the SideWinder laser mouse offers lots of opportunity for customization. Performance-wise, it has tracking of up to 2,000 dots per inch (DPI) and three levels of sensitivity, which can be adjusted on the fly — one setting translates a large movement of the mouse into a much smaller movement on the screen for increased pointing accuracy, while another makes small movements of the mouse into large ones on-screen (handy for dodging quickly). It's the first gaming mouse to feature an LCD that displays DPI settings and macro prompts, and there's a dedicated button for creating macros while playing a game. The mouse also has five programmable buttons, a textured metal scroll wheel, and three types of removable feet that offer different levels of friction. The body of the mouse contains a pullout tray that can store little weights — gamers can add or remove combinations of the weights (three 10-gram and one 5-gram) to achieve the perfect heft and balance. Any extra weights and the spare mouse feet are stored in an accessories box that can also act as a cable anchor.

Fatal1ty Gaming Headset

The black and red Fatal1ty Gaming Headset is part of the line of PC gaming products endorsed by Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel. It's a lightweight headset (200 grams) with full-size padded ear cups, and the adjustable boom microphone plugs into a minijack on the left cup so that it can be removed for games that don't involve voice chat. The mic has built-in noise-canceling technology to filter out background noise, and a frequency response of 100 Hz to 15 kHz. There's a small control box on the headphone cable with a volume dial and on-off switch for the microphone. The cable has mini-plugs to connect to a computer sound card's mic and headphone jacks. Creative says the 40-millimeter Neodymium-magnet driver in each earcup was designed for extended bass response to emphasize in-game sound effects such as explosions, generating deeper bass than standard headphones. The drivers have a frequency response of 20 Hz to 20 kHz.

G15 keyboard

Logitech's G15 gaming keyboard has a small built-in LCD "GamePanel" view screen that displays information ranging from a clock and countdown timer, to the operating load on the computer's memory and processor, to the amount of ammo and health the player has left (in games that are compatible with the G15). It also has an adjustable backlight to highlight the key lettering in dark rooms, and volume and audio-playback controls. A group of six "G-Keys" down the left side of the keyboard can be programmed with in-game macro commands. The G15 keyboard sports a pair of USB ports for plugging in things such as gaming mice and joysticks, and has a set of grooves for managing the peripheral cables that inevitably snake across the desks of hard-core gamers.

Ideazon Fang Gamepad

Ideazon's Fang Gamepad is a compact, USB-based computer add-on for people who want something a little more specialized than a regular keyboard for PC gaming. It has six large movement-control keys, along with a slew of programmable buttons – 35 to be exact, including four thumb-keys and 11 weapon-specific keys. Originally designed for military simulation games, it can be used by right- or left-handed players. It comes with software for customizing what the keys do, and for creating multi-key macros that can be executed with a single keystroke.

Reclusa keyboard

Microsoft teamed up with gaming peripheral maker Razer to design the Reclusa keyboard. The most noticeable feature of Reclusa is the blue backlighting that highlights the letters on the keys for darkened rooms. The keyboard uses Razer's Hyperesponse Gaming Key Action technology to speed up signals between the keyboard and PC, as well as gaming keys (two bumper buttons down each side and six on the keyboard) that can be programmed with macros to execute a number of simultaneous commands in a game with a single keypress. There is a jog-wheel on each side of the keyboard that can be programmed to control functions such as the speaker volume, or activate special in-game moves. The keyboard's software lets players set up different keyboard profiles for individual games. The keyboard has two USB ports to make it easier to plug in additional game controllers and peripherals.

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