The year is 2010, I had just convinced my dad to buy me a gaming laptop, saying I needed a great GPU to run the rendering softwares I needed for my design school. 19 year old me had just become a gaming enthusiast, and had just recently discovered his latest brand obsessions – Razer and Alienware. Everything Razer and Alienware made was hallowed to me, I had never seen a company embrace such a raw, futuristic, dominating design language before. Somewhere down the line, we’ve sort of left that language behind. Gaming apparatuses today are merely black forms with RGB lighting… but Gor Stepanyan and Isaev Workshop have managed to revive the beast that was the design era of Alienware and Razer.
Aptly named ‘CLAW’ this gaming mouse looks like it was forged by an EDC knifesmith. The mouse boasts edges so sharp you need a license to wield it in public – and it ditches that boring RGB template for an aesthetic that prioritizes visual dominance. It looks equal parts alien and equal parts predator, harnessing the kind of aesthetic I wish I saw more gaming-tech companies harness.
Designers: Gor Stepanyan & Isaev Workshop
The mouse features a unique design that combines ergonomics with edginess. There are parts of CLAW that are designed to rest the hand comfortably, and others that genuinely feel like they could be used to cut open a packet of Doritos while gaming. The body, for the most part, has the classic right-handed gaming mouse form factor. There’s a comfortable thumb-rest, with ridges that enhance grip while boosting airflow, so your hand never gets sweaty while playing. However, the CLAW name comes from its left and right hand buttons. Shaped to look like two claws emanating from the mouse, they come with pointed tips, but most importantly, have a design that expands and retracts, like the claws of a jungle cat.
This unique mechanism helps you customize your mouse size in a pinch, but what’s even more beautiful is the fact that the claws have a running gap between them. This gap houses what feels like a levitating scroll wheel, made from a rose-gold metal, which contrasts against the mouse’s gun-metal finish just perfectly. For a gaming mouse, the CLAW surprisingly doesn’t have any added buttons, but it does have a few profile-switching buttons on the bottom that let you alternate between presets, letting you switch from gaming to browsing to photo/video editing in a jiffy.
The mouse is wireless, obviously, but it does let you use it in a wired capacity thanks to a USB-C port placed in the front. This charges your mouse too, working in a dual capacity so that your peripheral never rests. This is also why a gamer worth their salt will never rely on Apple’s Magic Mouse…
This mouse, unfortunately, exists merely as a concept from the mind of Stepanyan (I honestly tried searching online). Although conceptual, it does present an interesting visual case study for gaming gear. Companies need to shed their RGB-related baggage and embrace exaggerated cyber-design. If the CLAW proves anything, it’s that this aesthetic fits perfectly well into the gamerverse… even though it doesn’t have a single LED backlight.
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