Fear This Geek

Johnathan Wendel is a cold-blooded killer.

He plays violent, first-person-shooter video games better than anyone in the world.

The genre may have apocalyptic undertones — such as Painkiller’s story of a man killed in a car crash, trapped in purgatory and charged with stopping an unholy war — but the objective is simple: Kill the other guy more often than he kills you.

“I’m very dominant at what I do,” Wendel tells the Pitch one early December afternoon at his home near Interstate 435 in south Kansas City.

Backing that boast is a trail of virtual corpses leading from the United States to South Korea to China to Russia. Wendel is the only player to win multiple world championships in different games — Doom 3, Quake 3, Alien vs. Predator 2 and Unreal Tournament 2003.

In six years of competitive gaming, Wendel has claimed more titles than any other professional gamer. With $500,000 in tournament winnings, he’s also the sport’s No. 1 money earner. In 2005, he took home $231,000. That figure doesn’t include the royalty checks he collects from licensing agreements with a handful of computer hardware makers, which he expects will soon surpass his tournament winnings.

Wendel finds himself in Kansas City maybe 90 days out of the year; otherwise, he lives out of hotel rooms and suitcases, flying to faraway lands to compete in professional tour stops and make celebrity appearances such as a 2004 shootout at the Great Wall of China.

Wendel looks nothing like the stereotypical gamer; he resembles a Midwestern surfer, with shaggy blond hair and a couple days’ worth of stubble. He wears baseball jerseys and hooded sweatshirts with khakis or blue jeans. He has a trim, athletic body, molded by running, tennis and golf.

Around the world, he’s known by the menacing name Fatal1ty.

If you haven't heard of him, you will soon. On January 22, 60 Minutes is scheduled to extend his fame by 15 minutes, exposing him to 14 million viewers. The New York Times, Time magazine, Business Week and The Los Angeles Times have taken note of his accomplishments. Last October, Fox Sports declared him the second-most-feared athlete in the world, behind ear-biting boxer Mike Tyson.

Oversized checks lean against a wall in his basement room. More trophies sit in the garage: a Suzuki Hayabusa crotch rocket — the fastest street-legal motorcycle in the world — that he won in Los Angeles in 2000, a custom-painted Ford Focus he won playing Alien vs. Predator 2 in Dallas in 2001. The car's vanity plates read "F8TL1TY." He carries two Sharpies in the car for signing autographs.

When Fatal1ty entered the Cyberathlete Professional League at 18, he was an unknown. Now he is the league's biggest star.

"He's the most visible and the most respected professional gamer today," says Angel Munoz, founder of the eight-year-old CPL. Last year, the league gave away $1 million in cash prizes. "He's certainly getting the most endorsements and winning the bigger prizes," Munoz says.

But the past year has been rough on Fatal1ty.

Each new sponsorship deal came with new demands on his time. His touring schedule was whipping him, and so was a 20-year-old Dutchman named Sander Kaasjager, known on the gaming circuit as Vo0. In 2005, Vo0 won five of the CPL's nine tour stops, and Fatal1ty won just two. In Barcelona in April, Fatal1ty placed sixth, his worst finish ever. Figuring he'd partied too much in Ireland, Fatal1ty quit the bottle. He met with his handlers and told them he wasn't getting enough practice. They worked out a deal: Before each CPL tour stop, Fatal1ty would get two weeks to practice. In Rio de Janeiro in May, he finished second to Vo0.

"Brazil taught me that I can definitely beat this guy," Fatal1ty says. "And then Sweden came, and I lost by one frag [kill] the whole time. I'm like, dude, I can beat this guy."

Back on American soil in July, Fatal1ty beat Vo0 in Grapevine, Texas, to win his first tour stop of the year. They would take turns winning over the next couple of months, but going into the Cyberathlete Professional League World Tour Grand Finals in November, Vo0 was still the man.

By then, Fatal1ty was his own brand — a brand of merchandise worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and built upon his stardom as the top gamer in the world. Winning the CPL World Tour Grand Finals couldn't have meant more.

More than a million viewers watched From Game to Fame: The CPL World Tour Final, MTV's condensed, half-hour version of the league championships this past November. And 110,000 people streamed the entire match on Overdrive, MTV's broadband Internet channel, during the week of the finals.

"As Fatal1ty would tell himself, it's not enough to participate or compete," Munoz tells the Pitch. "He has to win. That's why he turned the i in his name into a 1."

Weeks before November's CPL World Tour Grand Finals, Fatal1ty starts practicing in his ranch-style home. Inspired by Batman Begins, he trains his body and mind. Like Bruce Wayne, he removes himself from the outside world. He gives up grooming. He lets his hair go wild. His whiskers grow to woodsman length. He runs in the street to strengthen his body. He plays Painkiller for a minimum of eight hours a day.