Pro Gamer Fatal1ty Talks Tactics, Endorsements 58
An anonymous reader writes "Quake master Johnathan Wendel, better known as Fatal1ty, talks about his life and the professional gaming scene over at ZDNet. Asked how he keeps his reflexes sharp, he said: 'I use the same tactics in 'Quake' that I used in tennis. It's all about mind games, knowing what your opponent's thinking, knowing where a shots going to go. Anything in a computer game, I can relate it to something in sports I've played. The rail gun (the heaviest weapon in 'Quake') -- that's like going for the overhead slam in tennis. You set 'em up and then you drive it home with your hardest shot. It's like all the shots in tennis are, back and forth, trying to get them off balance. And when you do, you slam it down their throat. Same as gaming.'"
He's getting into the PC manufacturing game? (Score:5, Interesting)
Really, he doesn't earn much money and probably would be earning more money had he gone to college and gotten a decent job (at least 50k) and I'm sure he's capable.
But he says he wants to create a company that makes the whole she-bang and doesn't just buy commodity parts. Lets presume that he will actually buy his chips from AMD/Intel. But he is actually going to create a company that is the equivilant of, say, Abit (motherboard) plus Nvidia (video) plus Creative (sound) plus Micron (memory). Seriously. He may as well start making his own CPU, too.
So if he thinks he can pull that off, well.... just never mind what I said about him making more money going to college. Stick to the parent's basement / gaming career.
Sports (Score:5, Interesting)
He probably does fine... (Score:4, Interesting)
He, and others like him fly around to different tournaments pulling down 5 figure prizes quite often. I was at QuakeCon 2001 where he got second, and $10,000, and had just come from another tournament, and was on his way to yet another. So, he needed someone to drive his novelty check home. A buddy of mine volunteered, and we drove it home. So, we took advantage of the situation [locoburger.org]. It was fun.
played fatal1ty (Score:5, Interesting)
One of his sponsors had him set up in Kentia Hall at the last E3, going head to head on UT2k3 with hapless fools like me. I'm about an average to slightly above average player (I end up right in the middle when I play online)...with fatal1ty I think we wound up at around 0-30 after five minutes.
Before seeing him in action, I wouldn't have believed that there was such a huge difference in hand-eye coordination and reflexes between a normal player and a pro. Pretty impressive. He said that he had a perfect record for E3 - he hadn't been killed once.
Not the first athlete gamer (Score:5, Interesting)
Not that anyone remembers him these days. The current world-champion DM player seems to be different every time I look >.>
Fatal1ty is a tool. (Score:2, Interesting)
Fatal1ty was straightedge in a community of partiers and drug users. If they ever instituted drug testing in these competitions, 90% of the participants would fail. Weed, speed, coke, underage drinking were some of the things that were quite prevalent from what I saw.
John visited some friends of mine in Illinois and we all went out to dinner at a local TGI Fridays. He wasn't what you'd call blessed with the social skills. Egotistical and just plain annoying and/or boring to be around. One of the main reasons he was so succesful is not because he was particularly better then anyone else, but he was one of the first to realize there was genuine income potential competing, and that maybe it wasn't all just fun and partying, that maybe practicing daily was necessary to stay on the top rung. Many others in the community didn't realize this at first and were quickly left behind. I'm sure they've caught up by now.....