Dennis Fong
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dennis Fong (方鏞欽 born 1977), also known under the pseudonym Thresh, is a successful serial entrepreneur and celebrity in the gaming world. Dennis, deemed the "Michael Jordan of Video games" by the Wall St. Journal and voted as the "Top North American E-Sports Figure of all time" [1] by the E-sports Entertainment Association, is considered to be the first major star of electronic sports. Dennis is best known for co-founding Xfire, an instant messenger and social networking site for gamers which was acquired by Viacom for $102 million in April 2006, and winning John Carmack's Ferrari 328 in a 1997 Quake tournament. Thresh went undefeated and won every tournament he entered over a five year span, and did it in a variety of games including Doom I and II, Quake I, II, and III, and Starcraft.
The crowning highlight of his gaming career was at the Mplayer-sponsored Red Annihilation tournament in 1997 where he won a Ferrari. He and "Entropy" 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 was not due to amazing reflexes, as most presume, but because of his ability to get into his opponents' minds and predict what they were going to do. His opponents called his intuitive ability "Thresh ESP."
Fong often draws parallels between business and gaming and says that his approach to both is not all that different. In both cases, he says that you must understand what your opponents' motivations are, what they are thinking, and be able to anticipate what they are going to do next. In gaming that information is used to defeat his opponents, whereas in business it is often used to find a way to collaborate with them.
Using his prize winnings and endorsement money which was rumored to be in the six-figures, Fong and his brother Lyle started GX Media, the parent company of Gamers.com, Firingsquad.com, and Lithium Technologies. Dennis was the CEO of the company while Lyle was the CTO; together they grew the company organically and profitably to a 100 person company. Dennis also 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.
[edit] References
- "Top Ten North American Esports Figures" at Esportsea.com
- "Thresh: the legend of Quake" at Cyberfight.org
- "King of the Gamers" by Washington Post
- "The Michael Jordan of Gaming" by Salon Magazine
- "Valley Boys" Cover of Business Week
