Startup GamerTech has unveiled its Magma Glove, a self-heating, fingertip-less compression glove design aimed squarely at eSports professionals and other competitive gamers, as noticed by Notebookcheck. The design was made in collaboration with eSports team Oxygen eSports, a well-established eSports organization whose players primarily specialize in FPS titles like Valorant, Call of Duty, and more. But could a pair of gloves really make such a big difference?
While eSports is a much larger industry today than it was in the golden era of CS:S, the old tenets of comfort and consistency being the top priority for competitive players remain true today. FPS Coach and former top Counter-Strike player Ron Rambo Kim once released a seminal 27-minute video teaching mouse aim. And one of his most important points relates to having always-consistent forearm placement between sessions. The smallest differences can and do matter when playing high-dexterity competitive games, even outside of the FPS genre.
A study cited by Notebookcheck points toward the best in-game performance occurring at an average temperature between 10 to 20 degrees Celsius, or 50 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit. This is a temperature most would consider average room temperature, though of course climate and use of air conditioning can change the exact feel.
In any case, it's important to not play in an overly cold room if it can be avoided, since hand agility does decrease as your body gets colder. This can be particularly problematic if you already have poor circulation to your extremities, or simply live in a cold climate and don't want to kick on a heater for every scrimmage or tournament match.
So, the Magma Glove solution to all of this is providing a fingerless compression glove with dedicated, timed heating elements to help keep gamers' hands flexible, warm, and even dry through the use of moisture wicking. This should be particularly useful for competitive gamers who actually travel to events regularly (whether that be local fighting game events or major LANs for FPS titles), since you can't always guarantee an ideal climate where you're competing.
That said, in my experience traveling to venues filled with sweaty gamers for competition's sake — even in the midst of actual snowstorms — it's more likely traveling competitors will play in too-hot rooms than too-cold ones. These still seem nice, but that's worth noting. Fortunately, there are three customizable heat settings and (presumably) the ability to turn off the heating entirely, at which point the Magma Glove still remains a reasonably-slick compression glove design.
