Fatal1ty And DirecTV
Jonathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel, perhaps the best known and most successful professional gamer, wants to get one thing straight: he's not retiring.
However, Wendel is taking on a new career in television by teaming up with DirecTV to launch the Championship Gaming Series, a new international pro video gaming league that will be broadcast via DirecTV starting this spring on The 101 channel. Wendel announced last week at CES 2007 that he will become a play-by-play commentator, advisor and official spokesperson for the Championship Gaming Series.
TwitchGuru caught up with Wendel at CES in Las Vegas, and he was quick to point out that he's not retiring from professional competition. "I don't plan on retiring anytime soon," he said. "But I do want to concentrate on making gaming into a mainstream sport."
Wendel is clearly excited about the new pro league. "It's going to be great," he said. "I'm really excited about it because it's going to be like real professional sports. We're going to have teams, drafts and salaried players just like any other pro sport." As for his role as a play-by-play commentator, Wendel said he's looking forward to the challenge of quickly analyzing and deconstructing the fast-paced of professional matches. "It's pretty fast, so I'm just going to try to break all of it down into simplistic terms," Wendel said. "I'll approach it by commentating on what I would do in certain situations or what strategies would be good for a particular game."
As for the rising popularity of professional gaming, Wendel said he isn't surprised. In fact, he said he's been waiting for it to happen for some time. "I've been wondering when this was going to happen," he said. "Gaming is a global sport. It's not like the NFL, which is only big in America. So I knew that this had potential, and it's great to have DirecTV, Fox and other companies behind it."
But what will this mean for other professional gaming leagues such as the Cyberathlete Professional League and World Cyber Games (Wendel has won four CPL championship titles and one WCG title)? Wendel isn't saying when or where he'll play again, just that he's committed to his new commentator role for the Championship Gaming Series and would like to see pro gaming as a whole continue to grow and thrive.
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