The Esports Awards announced today that Johnathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel won the first Esports Lifetime Achievement Award, and will receive it at Games Convention Leipzig on Aug. 25.
Despite having an army of haters speculating on his every move, John transcended from being a competitive gamer in Quake 3 to his own brand name, with a sponsored stable of players underneath him.
Instead of just building his own bank account (which, to be sure, he’s done), he also made a lot of other people rich as well. I’d go so far as to say that his fame easily eclipses that of Dennis “Thresh” Fong, one of the original professional gamers, partly due to the fact that many eSports websites didn’t exist in Thresh’s day.
Anyway, congratulations to Fatal1ty. Even though he’s not a dominant player anymore, he’s done more than his part to raise the awareness of competitive gaming in North America and Europe.
