 Esports, a show devoted to all things esports. I'm your host, Catherine Norr. Today we're talking with 12-time FPS world champion, co-founder and chief gaming officer of ReadyUp and Esports Hall of Famer, Jonathan Fatality Wendell. Welcome, Jonathan. Hey, thank you. Thanks for having me. How are you doing today? Nice to see you again. Great. So I'm sure you're asked this a lot, but and I can kind of guess what your answer is, but what is the origin of the tag Fatality? So actually as a kid, I used to play a game called Mortal Kombat a lot and I used to go out with my friends, go to like a 7-Eleven or wherever an arcade was and save up some quarters and we'd play Mortal Kombat when I was probably only 10 or 11 years old and this is before the internet came out so I would log on to BBS's and it would ask me what my alias was and I was like, I didn't know what my alias was. I didn't have one yet. I was 11 years old or so. And so I kind of chose name Fatality because in Mortal Kombat when you do the finish move, you've already won, but now it's all about the show. And so Fatality was kind of like a metaphor of like me like not only dominate my opponents, but do it with like a show, make it exciting for people to watch. And that was kind of like my hallmark thing was always to perform my best on the biggest stages and I was able to do that. And what was your evolution in FSP games? In FPS games? I'm sorry. Well, I think it was, obviously playing Mortal Kombat, playing a 1v1 type of game was very exciting to me. And then when the internet came out, you had games like Doom and Quake and Unalternament and all these different first person shooter games. And I just kind of like took it by storm and basically started, you know, playing a lot online and eventually playing in tournaments around the Midwest. I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. And then eventually I started winning all the tournaments in my area. And by the time I turned 18 just graduating high school, one of my friends told me about this tournament in Texas and I went down there, I had 500 bucks my bank count and I ended up winning over four grand that weekend playing a Quake three arena. And I was like, holy crap, he can win money doing this? This is insane. And so I remember slapping the check on my dad's table as the young kid and obviously, you know, it was just an amazing moment for me as a young kid and, you know, as a young adult at that point. But I basically started a career from that point on. What did your parents think of that? Well, I mean, I actually had to move out of my mom's house to pursue this dream of mine. And my dad understood my competitive drive and he let me live with him for about a year or so. But in the first three months, I won that $4,000 check. And so my dad was just really kind of just happy, you know, just like, you know, you know, it's kind of cool that your son's talented at something where he can go make four grand on a weekend. That was a lot of money back then, especially for me only having 500 bucks in my bank account. But yeah, so basically after that, I, you know, it was basically proving, you know, my family wrong a lot of times, but, you know, my whole career, I've been kind of like trying to prove that eSports is even a thing. I was at the very beginning of eSports and showing people around the world that you can make a living playing video game. Sure. And so what are some of your career highlights as an eSports professional? Well, obviously my very first highlight was, you know, going right after that tournament that I won the four grand at, I got a chance to go to Sweden to represent USA. I went there and I played against the top 12 guys in the world that were invited there. And I beat all of them. I won 18 games straight, losing zero. And then instantly I was kind of the number one seed. I was the number one gamer in the world at that point for Quake 3 Arena. Shortly after that, I won tournament after tournament went to Korea and South Korea won the gold medal there and 2000 representing USA again. And then went to Germany, won there with Australia, won there. I just started just traveling all around the globe and just kept winning. And the biggest tournament in my life was actually in 2005 where I was playing a season long million dollar world tour in a game called Painkiller. It's very much similar to Quake in an old tournament. It's the first version shooter. And in this game, I was kind of the underdog. There's another player that was definitely the better player, you know, leading into it. And I was kind of fighting from behind the whole time. And eventually at the biggest moment, the biggest stage, I was able to overtake him and win the 100,000 championship in New York City. We got featured on 60 Minutes. I was on MTV TRL and got front page of Business Week, Time Magazine. It was kind of a wild time in my career. But definitely capitalized on the moment. Okay. And there's a picture of you with a whole bunch of checks. Why don't you tell us about that? Oh, that's just, that's a lot of traveling. That's traveling all around the world. There's one from France there, one from Texas. And then there's, it looks like Singapore, more Texas. Yeah, there's a lot of tournaments in there but basically just travel around the world winning. You know, all these checks at a young age was, it was really phenomenal. It was really crazy. I knew I was doing something special and different than everyone else. And I was kind of like the living proof that you can make a living playing video games as a career, not just as like a hobby. And let's show the doom championship picture. Let's hear about that. Yeah, this was a fun tournament. This was a tournament that was put on by QuakeCon. QuakeCon is like one of the biggest landfests in America. About over like two, 3,000 people you should show up to this event. They probably have traffic over 10,000 people come throughout the weekend. It's a really fun event. It's a great way to bond with people in the community. But in this event specifically, they're actually, they were launching the game Doom 3. And so none of us have fully played the game yet. Like some of us were there like the opening night of the game going for sale. We bought it at Best Buy or wherever they sold it at. In fact, then when you actually physically go to the store and get it. But yeah, we played for like five days and then obviously went to the tournament. And then we didn't even know there was money up for grabs. The news was that there would be something fast to win. And I'm like, oh, what's fast? Like I was thinking like a car or something like that. I've won cars before. I've won a motorcycle. I've won different prizes playing video games. So I was getting kind of excited because like something fast could be a vehicle for sure. And I was really excited about that. But they never really announced it. So I remember going to steak and shake with a bunch of my gamer buddies. We were all there having a great time. It's really just a great time to hang out with a community of people that you typically hang out with online, but now you're in real life and you're doing things in the person. And I remember one of my buddies telling me, it's like, hey, you've already won 10 grand. I'm like, what do you mean I won 10 grand? It's like, well, 25 grand first and 15 grand second and 10 grand third, like you're already in the top three. You're guaranteed like at least 10 grand. It's like no way I'm winning 10 grand this weekend. And they're like, yeah. So then I went on to play in tournaments and I ended up winning the whole thing and won 25 grand that weekend for playing Doom 3. So it was a really cool experience to win that. But also just playing a new game that has like a new fighting technique and being able to be that dominant at the early stage of a game really showed kind of like my skillsets, I believe. Well, there was a big change from when there was a tournament in 1972 where the prize was a subscription to Rolling Stone Magazine, right? Yeah, I was a part of that lifetime, part of those days of early esports in Quake where I would get like a cell phone for a year, like where I'd get internet for a year for free. And I think the most thing I cherished the most was actually just this piece of paper that says I was a champion. And I put that in my algebra binder in school and I would brag to my friends behind my shoulder all the time. And it was just a lot of fun back then. And those are the days before esports was really a career. It was just a hobby and people were just having a lot of fun playing and fragging out online. Let's show the Intel photo. So tell us about that tournament. Yeah, well, so this tournament obviously was the World Tour finals, the Czech there. And that was just kind of like my big win. It was the finale of winning the World Tour that year. It basically, the tournament was kind of built out to be like this number one paint core player in the world versus the number one gamer in the world. So that was my arch rival all year long. And then I was able to walk away with it. So you couldn't ask for a better like rivalry, person-versus-person kind of experience. It's like what you see in the movies and what you see in scripts and so forth. So we really captured a true story there and kind of the true underdog story, but it was a good battle. Sure, and a viewer asked what games, what are some of your favorite games and do you play any casual games? Yeah, I mean, I think all the games I play have some competitive aspect to it. I just love competing in general, that's kind of like in my blood. So obviously the last few years, I've been playing a lot of PUBG, Player of the Known Battlegrounds. It's been one of my favorite games. Right now, I actually been playing a game called Diabotical. You can check it out as diabotical.com, it's a free to play game. But it's very much like Quake, Serena FPS shooter. And then the games I play casually, I mean, and like I still take kind of serious is like I play some mobile games as well, whenever I'm taking a break or probably passing out going to sleep, I'll play a game called Clash Royale. And so those are kind of like my games I like to play and sometimes you can find me live streaming these games online. Okay, yeah, that was my next question. Where do you study? I was trying to beat you to it. It was like I was predicting the question, that's my skill. Can you stream on Twitch? Yeah, so I stream on Twitch, just twitch.tv, slash fatality, I stream on there as much as I can. I'm actually holding a tournament this weekend for Diabotical. So trying to have different avenues of engaging with the community and people. And I feel like people really like seeing me host events as well, not only just playing. So I'm trying to explore with that concept and idea with holding my own events. It's called the Fatality. And on Saturdays we have an open tournament for like kind of like the community. And then Sunday is like the finale where I bring in top eight players that I invite to play against these eight players who qualify for the open tournament. And this was kind of a fun, a community event. I'm doing my second one this weekend and looking forward to do more in the future with other game titles as well. Okay, so now I'm sure a lot of people want to hear this. What advice do you give to gamers who want to go pro? Well, I mean, the biggest thing about going pro is I think obviously you have to be skilled and you have to have a passion to compete. You have to understand people's, what they're thinking before they even think it. You have to have good acrobatics, I think the reflexes. And a lot of this stuff actually comes from also being, I think very well-rounded. I grew up playing sports my whole life so I understood competition from the sports side of things. I understood how to outthink people and play tricks on them. I do the same thing in the video games. And you try to get under their skin a little bit. You try to get them to make a mistake. And but also like the things I did outside was I also, I ran every day. I ran two miles every day. I run two miles, do some push-ups and setups and that'd be kind of like my quick workout for the day. And then I also get back to training and doing my role job, right, playing video games. And so, I think that's some of the good advice of being well-rounded, but the best way to kind of like give yourself a jumpstart in the game is be a part of the alpha, the early beta test of games. Make sure you're there at the very beginning because that will give you a big edge over your competition and also will keep you up with the meta and finding good people to train and play with. Sure. And what would you say to people who say that eSports isn't a sport? Well, I mean, I never really get really into that much. I mean, I have a lot I can back it up with, you know, of what I do in traditional sports and how I outthink people and play tricks on people in real sports. Like when I play tennis, like, you know, I hit certain shots to hit them in a certain spot. So then I move my opponent to a certain area then I can hit the winner. In the video games, I'm doing the same thing. I'm trying to get inside his head. I'm trying to shoot shots in a certain way to push him into a corner where I can, you know, finish him off with a rocket launcher or a shotgun. So the, I think the same gamesmanship and so forth that I see in traditional sports, I can use that also in the game. And I don't know, it's worked for me. And, you know, it's very competitive. So if you like competition, eSports is right up there with the best in traditional sports as well. I interviewed one of the people that is involved with the Arcade Blaster. Have you heard of that? Arcade Blaster? No. Yeah. Oh, okay. Well, I'll just have to have you watch my video of that. It's pretty interesting. It's a tool that you can use in FPS shooter games where it's like a gun and you play. It's kind of cool. Oh, cool. Yeah, that was an earlier show that I had. So... Is it like, is it based around like reflexes and like shooting targets? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, cool. Yeah. Yeah. PewDiePie is their, is their spokesperson. Oh, that's cool. Okay. Well, there you go. Yeah. So tell us about your company Ready Up. Yeah. So Ready Up, we're a B2B company. We're trying, you know, our goal is to help, you know, people that have their own operated channels to engage with their audience more. So we want to help their audience engage in events, to buy merchandise, to add events to their calendar so they can stay informed of when events are coming up. So events, we look at it as very broadly. Event could be, you know, it could be a tournament. It could be a qualifier. It could be a physical event. You want to travel to it and go watch like a big tournament. But also it could be a DLC is coming out. New season is starting. A new cosmetic item dropped in the game. So we want to help people engage in what they really enjoy and love. And we believe with our platform and how we can offer our platform to businesses can really help engage their audience in a more powerful and meaningful way. Okay. And so why did you start that? The reason why I started is because it's something that I obviously want in my life because, you know, it's hard to keep up to date with all the games I love to play. So when a new season starts for Diablo or when Diablo 4 comes out, I want to know like pretty fast. And, you know, I can't rely on the TV tell me when it's coming out because the TV is not really that game or ask unless people are spending tens of millions of dollars for marketing budget to let you know, call if the dude just came out. But like, you know, the idea is that you have all these games that you really fall in love with even like Player Unknown Battleground, PUBG. It didn't have a lot of mainstream marketing. It was kind of word of mouth and got exposure. But as the years went on, I was still loving PUBG. I wanted to engage more with it, but like a new map came out. Well, I have to rely on someone telling me that a new map came out and so forth. I think with Ready Up, we can help the mainstream be more connected with the gaming world and eSports so that we can get that information out faster and quicker. And then that turns in more gamers, more people playing eSports, more competition, more marketing dollars, more sponsors, just everything gets bigger. So I think we're still at the infinite stage of how big eSports and gaming can get. And my goal with Ready Up is to kind of fill that void and make it a better wellness for everyone that really enjoys the game to play. Sure. And what is your role with the company? So my role is like, I'm co-founder and chief gaming officer. You know, a lot of these concepts and ideas have came from myself personally, just because I've been studying the market for a pretty long time. I've been doing this for a couple of decades now, even though I look a little younger. But yeah, it's something that I just been noticing that's been lacking and missing in the space. And so right now I deal with bringing on new leagues. Obviously we work with NACE. We work with ESL. We work with a lot of collegiate level leagues and organizations to help engage against their audience. So our distribution for our platform through our customers' own operating channels is growing every day. And we want to continue to help them and get this product launched fully in 2021. Cool. Okay, so what can you find on Ready Up? You mentioned different events. Maybe you can tell us more of exactly what you find. Yeah, so right now you can go to readyup.com. You can check us out. Obviously the Ready Up.com is kind of a consumer-facing product right now. We want to offer that service to businesses. So but you can go check out readyup.com right now and get an experience of like for your business, like what you would like to possibly see on your own operating channel. But readyup.com is an opportunity also for people that just want to know when events are coming up, when a term is coming up. And you can easily click on Discover. You can go through all the events that are coming up. And then actually, if you register on readyup.com, you can actually add those events to your native calendar on your phone. So if you want to stick it to your Google Calendar or Android Calendar, you can do that very easily through this summit. And it's a cool way to keep up the day. Like I look at my calendar here on my phone and I can see that my event's coming up this weekend, right? And on that actual calendar invite or on that calendar sync that we have, it shows like the call to actions, like download game by merchandise, sign up. And it gives all the details of what's going on in the event as well. So there's a lot of call to actions to get people to engage and to be informed. And now you know that this event's coming up, you can tell your friends, you can share it with your friends. You know, if I know like a big, like say a world championships coming up and I want to watch it just like the Super Bowl, I can call my friends up like, oh, hey, I forgot, but this weekend is the League of Legends World Finals. Like I want to watch it, hey, gamer friends, do you want to come over my house and let's like, you know, watch it together or do you want to log on to Discord and talk while the game's going on and just kind of hang out and, you know, have a drink? Like that's kind of like the aura I want to kind of happen with Ready Up. I want this thing kind of naturally just kind of flow and I think we can offer a lot of people, a lot of value in Ready Up. Before Ready Up, how would people find events and merchandise and things? Yeah, so you literally have to rely on word of mouth in a lot of ways or do you have to find out from your biggest favorite influencer and rely on them to give you the information? But, you know, for me in the past, it was always about me being on IRC, which is like kind of like the early version of Discord, right? But it's, you know, basically relying on my friends or my network of friends to tell me, hey, there's an event coming up. Oh, there's a tournament in St. Louis. You need to go to it. Like all those kind of things, like if I didn't have a friend online to tell me, I wouldn't have won as like, I can count probably tens of thousands of dollars that I would not have won if I didn't have a friend tell me about it. And so all those opportunities are just missed if you just don't know. And so I guess that's like kind of a very good example of how it could be used. Do those friends get a cut if they tell you about a tournament and you win? Oh no, no, no, they get no cut. No, no, I'll be nice to them. I'll practice a little bit more or do something, but all my friends, I remember the guy that, you know, I bought that guy some drinks. So, you know, these guys just wanted me to be in it too. I mean, they were, you know, I was in a position where I was, you know, people knew me and they liked to see me compete. So I was kind of an added value to the event in general. And so, but yeah, I mean, some friends, you know, I would train with or I would work with and that was kind of like a trade in kind of thing. Like, you know, these people I actually train with and I helped them get better. And when we go to the tournament together, they have access to me and to train with me. So I used to have like a small network of people I trained with and I would have like a hotel, like as a land center, I'd have like four computers in there. And I would basically have my small group of people that I trusted. And some of these people that were part of my network, they let me know about tournaments and so forth, they came part of that network to train with me. And it was a great, it was a great time. I loved the, I loved training and practicing. That was some of the funnest times of my life. And I was competing in the tournaments for the biggest high of my life, but the training and the practicing was a lot of fun too. Sure, and there was a great picture of you and a helicopter. I want to hear what the story behind that. Yeah, just, you know, this is me, gosh, this was like 2007, I think, 2008. And I landed in France and was going to Monaco. And I just, this was like, you know, this is a girlfriend I had back then, but you know, we actually, I was being really sweet that day. She, I, you know, I told her, you know, I asked her on a date like two years before this. And this guy asked her like, it was not going on a date with me. And I was like, sorry, my helicopter's broken. So then we dated for a couple of years. And this was the two year mark. And I took her to France and went to Monaco. And I was like, oh, I got the helicopter fix. And then we took the helicopter to Monaco. It was a great date. Oh, that's a great story. So how can someone partner with ReadyUp? Yeah, I mean, you can just go to readyup.com. We have the contact information in there to, you know, reach out to us to do business. Like I said, we have been working with ESL and NACE and cyber athlete for Southeast Asia and so forth. And just reach out to us on readyup.com. And we can, you know, look at possibly working with your channel of distribution with your own operated channels. So definitely reach out to us. Okay. And there was another question from a viewer. Do you think that people in esports need a good personality or do they just need to be good at the game? So I would say you need to, like if you really want to take off, you have to have the personality kind of go with it a little bit. Just like you see in any sport, you see these guys who are like insanely talented. But, you know, maybe they don't have the TV charisma or wherever the deal is. And they just, they don't get the deals. Like that deals outside of their endemic brands or business, right? So to really step outside the box, you kind of have to have something that, you know, that, you know, other people don't have. But if you're very talented and very skilled, you'll find a way to make money from it or monetize it. It's, you know, being good is very important. Don't, don't get me wrong. That's probably the number one thing. And then we can figure out the other side. And we've definitely enjoyed your personality today, fatality. So we do need to wrap it up. Thank you so much for being my guest. Oh, thank you so much. And thank you for walking me down memory lane. It was, it was enjoyable. Fantastic. And thank you to the viewers who submitted questions. And thank you for joining us today. Next week, my guest will be TV producer, Jay Moses. We'll be talking about eSports and Hollywood. See you then.