Johnathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel is living the dream of every corridor-crawling, demon-blasting, FPS player: He makes gobs of money by destroying competitors with his mad keyboard-and-mouse skillz. He began his professional career as a competitive video-game player in 1999 when he snared third place in the Cyberathlete Professional League tournament. He soon became a three-time CPL champion of the year, won the title of world’s best Quake III player, and grabbed the first Doom 3 Deathmatch Championship at the 2004 Quakecon. Now he’s launching his own brand of Fatal1ty gaming products, including motherboards and graphics cards. Who knew that playing video games could be so profitable? We asked him a few questions in the Green Room about the world of professional gaming.

When did you first get the idea that you could actually make a living as a pro video game player?

I’d have to say it was when I first got sponsored by a company that flew me to Sweden because they wanted to send the top gamers in the world to compete there. I went there and beat everyone, and the company approached me and they were like, “Hey, we’d like to do some sort of deal together.” So we worked out a deal where they paid me $30,000 a year just to wear their shirt, have my picture on the back of their mouse box, and actually use their equipment. So that was a great opportunity, and I knew there was a lot of money at stake just playing games. That year, I actually won $110,000, so it was definitely amazing. I had been playing games in competition since I was 13, but it wasn’t until my late teens that I started taking it a little more seriously and realized, “Whoa, I could make a living playing video games, this is insane.” But the next thing you know, I’m traveling the world playing video games, winning over a hundred grand a year, and now I actually have my own company and my own brand, so it’s definitely awesome what gaming has done for me personally.

Were your parents skeptical about this at first when you were still a kid?

My parents were totally against me playing on the computer too much. But I played a lot of sports growing up: baseball, basketball, tennis, hockey, football, every type of sport you can think of, all day. Then at night I played video games; it was my other hobby, my other sport. At 8 pm at night, it’s dark outside and you can’t play hockey on the street, so you go inside and play some games because it’s just as competitive as playing a sport outside. Now gaming is getting the recognition where it’s almost considered a sport, and people are realizing how much skill and how much dedication and strategy is involved in gaming, just like a sport.

Is there anything you attribute your gaming skills to?

I think a lot of it comes from playing sports, just growing up playing all these different sports, learning how to think, learning how to win, learning how to have a mental focus – having a goal that whole game, a certain strategy, and never going off line. Learning how people are thinking is the biggest thing; you have to be in their head and almost think what they’re thinking before they think it. So you have to be totally on the ball. I love playing with people’s minds and beating them. I try to out-fake my opponent -- I always change up my style, do a certain pattern and on the third time you don’t do it the same, so they’re not expecting the new thing. You always have to be on the edge of fooling your enemy.

What’s your current favorite game title?

Doom 3 is the most fun game ever. The graphics are insane, the single-player was definitely mind-boggling... probably the scariest game I’ve ever played. Personally, I’ve played a lot of games. I’m used to seeing everything. Nothing scares me. I expect everything. But playing Doom 3, and being surprised time after time again, was definitely exciting for me because I haven’t had that scary thought for so long. And now it’s, “Oh my gosh – I can still be scared!” There were a lot of cool things about Doom 3 that made it one of my favorite games today.

How did you go from being a competitive player to owning your own gaming company?

A lot of gamers don’t know what equipment to use, so I kind of wanted to advertise it and tell people, “This is what you should use to game with.” Literally, you become a better player by using this equipment. I have my huge mouse pad that I’ve been using for five years now, and people are just now slowly picking up on it. So showing all the advantages of using a better product is definitely one of my goals with the brand. Now we’re dealing with companies like ABIT; we’re partnering with them and actually producing a Fatal1ty motherboard that’s coming out this month, and then also a Fatal1ty graphics card. I really sat there with engineers and designers, telling them “Okay, we need this on the motherboard.” So we went through all this stuff since May working on this motherboard, and coming out with a ton of cool things. I mean, I’ve been through every situation of LANing and gaming across the world, so I’ve been through every single problem dealing with a computer. I think we’ve covered almost every problem – every consideration that you wish was easier is now easier with this motherboard.

Visit the world of Fatal1ty at http://fatal1ty.com