Dennis Fong

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Dennis Fong (方鏞欽 born 1977), also known under the pseudonym Thresh, is an Internet entrepreneur and professional gamer best known for winning John Carmack's Ferrari 308 in a 1997 Quake tournament. Not only did he win every tournament he attended over a five year span, but he did it in a variety of games including Doom I and II, Quake I–III, and Starcraft. He is considered to be the first major star of electronic sports, and it is believed that during the peak of his gaming career he made six figures a year in endorsements alone.

Fong initially chose the pseudonym "Threshold of Pain", which meant being able to withstand enemy fire and suffering. However, as many games had an eight-character limit and the truncated "Threshol" did not sound cool, he went with "Thresh" and liked the meaning of it which was to strike repeatedly. Today, Fong never uses his pseudonym for casual online gaming, as it has been adopted by a large number of imposters.

The crowning highlight of his gaming career was at the Microsoft-sponsored Red Annihilation tournament in 1997. He and "Entropy" (pseudonym, real name unknown) emerged from a crowded field to face off in the Quake level E1M2 "Castle of the Damned", where Thresh defeated Entropy 14 to -1. A key to Thresh's success in gaming tournaments is not only due to his reflexes, but also because he made use of farsight, counter-intuition and tactics. For instance, he would not necessarily pick the most popular or strongest characters, but rather lesser known ones from which he would practice how to defeat the popular ones. In 1 on 1 deathmatch, he made it priority to understand the level and "control" vital items (using timed runs to repeatedly horde it from opponents) such as the rocket launcher and armors[1].

Using his prize winnings and endorsement money, Fong and his brother Lyle started GX Media, the parent company of Gamers.com and Firingsquad.com. Dennis worked for a time as editor-in-chief at the gaming site FiringSquad, wrote a monthly column in the popular PC Gamer magazine, and co-authored the Official Quake II Strategy guide.

In 1999, Fong, as the CEO of GX Media, raised over $11 million dollars in financing from CMGI and led the company to the position as the leading web portal for games. Fong's Ferrari was parked in the lobby of the GX Media offices and the company threw a party at the Playboy Mansion during E3. In 2001, Gamers.com was bought by Ziff-Davis, and various other parts were spun off into separate entities. One of the entities, Lithium Technologies (http://www.lithium.com), is now run by Dennis' brother, Lyle, and is a leading CRM company based on social technologies.

In 2002, Fong co-founded Xfire, an instant messenger and social networking site for gamers, with Mike Cassidy. Xfire grew to over four million users in less than two years, and was acquired by MTV Networks for $102 million in April 2006.