Wonderful!

These Thorin interviews with Quake players are always the best and this one kicks close to home. Im sure we all identify with Makaveli when we all tried to be Quake pros and everyone thought we were crazy. Well turns out we were ahead of our time. Now the money and the fame is there, but the games are dogshit. It is what it is.

Remember this guy for sure.

Had one of the best railguns (z4 king:P) and was considered one of the original q3 pros (or gamers who were pro when this a possible reality) who was living and selling the dream of being a pro gamer before it was really a thing and being expressed through ESR.

Even took the time to reply to a cringe message I sent him on ESR (2001/2) when I could not even health to health jump on t4, so says a lot about the guy.

How about socrates, fooki, ztrider, daler etc?

Props for this one.
Really enjoyed these reflections from everyones legend

This interview was incredible, and speaks to the pitfalls of gaming.

It can be so appealing to play a game you love 8+ hours a day, but ultimately if it doesn't bring you any long term stability it's worthless.

Initially it seems Makavelli is regretful that he didn't pursue gaming the same way Fatality did but then it becomes apparent he knew there was far more upside to pursuing ventures elsewhere.

Fun fact Dennis Fong aka Thresh is a multimillionaire now with multiple 8 figure exits, really impressive. Would love to see a guy like Thresh on next.

Initially it seems Makavelli is regretful that he didn't pursue gaming the same way Fatality

You can't just copy paste a Fatality, there was a lot of competition in Q3A, not everyone can be a champion. From the interview you can definitely tell he tried. Looking at his achievments it is rather unlikely he would have become like Fatal1ty.

It can be so appealing to play a game you love 8+ hours a day, but ultimately if it doesn't bring you any long term stability it's worthless.

You never know until you try, it is a difficult decision, I think often priviledged people give those things a try, people who have family with a business they can opt to work in for example, or have fuck you money, plenty of examples in the quake scene ... if you don't have either of those props, u should really think hard, or at least have some education part time going, or try for one year and if you didn't reach shit in one year, it is unlikely it is coming the next year ... but whatever, there are really some people who don't care it seems, just look at the PQL in QC, a lot of people there that pursued QC fulltime even though there wasn't a lot of prize money, probably they are already content with the status or hope to play in possible future high profile tournaments

Dennis Fong aka Thresh is a multimillionaire now with multiple 8 figure exits

Thresh used his name and made it a brand, he had column or so in the PC Gamer magazine ... but his money came from an unprofitable company with a failed gaming messaging client, but he managed to scrap of 150 million or so from some clueless MTV boomer manager suits in the dotcom boom time where a lot of paper tiger business were sold for 100 mil plus etc, I think MTV terminated that software a few years later ... since when I am not sure what Thresh is up to, isn't it now 20 years already since he sold that software? But there was already an interview where was pretty full of himself: https://www.esreality.com/post/2766052/reflections-with-thresh/

Oh thanks I didnt realise hed already done an interview with Thresh.

Fatality was before my time I only got into Quake during the QL era 2009ish. I take it he was simply better than Makaveli then? Skill wise do you have any comparisons of someone from the QL era to compare them to so I have some idea in my head of what the differences in level were? Thanks. I've watched Tox v Fatality Q4 finals but that's it really, I never enjoyed spectating Q4 VODs, probably because I never really played it.

Re the you have to try to know thats true. But theres always a opportunity cost where you could have been paving a road in something more lucrative. I give props to Makaveli for having the awareness at that age to step away when he was from the sounds of it bigger than most names.