David Whitaker, Nick Edward, The Inner Circle: At what age did you realize “I am good at video games”, and what was it like having that much attention being so young- you were 16-17 when people knew who you were. How was the pressure, being so known within the gaming circle?

DF: I remember specifically when it was: Growing up, I have an older brother of 3 years, and a younger brother of 3 years- I’m the middle child, and we used to play together all the time. We had maybe 2 or 3 computers at home at one time? And my older brother used to beat up on me- physically and in gameplay, as all older brothers do. (laughs) I was just a pure keyboard player, and he was as I mentioned earlier, a trackball-and-keyboard player. That alone was enough to enable him to beat me, because I had a fixed rate of turning. Finally I think I had one summer, this was- I was probably in Junior High School- I said, “You know what, I’ve had enough.” I know I could beat him because our games were super tight. I was just really- I was kind of stubborn. I was like, “Oh God, I don’t want to learn a new configuration with the mouse, I’m stuck on the whole keyboard thing,” and I realized I had hit my ceiling. So that summer, I made the switch, and I actually don’t think I ever lost after I made that switch. I started crushing my brother, he stopped wanting to play against me, and then online, I literally never lost.

It’s not like there were pro competitions and stuff happening all the time, I just started building up a name because I never lost. On the server that I was playing on, people from around the nation would log into that server and challenge me, and I’d beat all of them. I built up a pretty big name, well at least in the online world. Then Microsoft threw what I believe is the very first eSports competition- it’s called “Deathmatch 95”. They found players from all around the nation, plus the UK- I think it was like, 20-something of us. They flew us to Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, WA, and there was a stage set up, and like $10,000 worth of prizes. We competed till the wee hours of the morning, and I ended up winning that one. There were literally about 200 people still watching until the end. I remember, Jay Wilbur who was at id Software at the time- he was the CEO of id- we ran into each other a few months back, and we’re like, “That was literally the very first eSports event”, which is pretty crazy to think about.

DW: You have a very unique, distinct play style. Is there anyone today in either Quake or Doom that you feel matches or exceeds your skill?

DF: Uh, I think probably one of the closest to it now would be like “Rapha”? I mean obviously I think during those days, the concept of controlling a map, starving your opponent of resources, all of that kind of stuff was relatively new. So you know…now everyone does it, right? (laughs) They’ve taken it to a far greater degree than I did. Yeah, I would say Rapha, and before Rapha there were guys like [John Hill] “ZeRo4” that played in a very similar style. My play style was very fluid; I didn’t really rely on aim- I was really about out-thinking, out-positioning, outsmarting my opponents. And there’s definitely players now that seem to focus on that as well.

BY: I wanted to talk to you about Xfire, as I know you co-founded Xfire back in the day. How did that idea come about, and what were the early days like?

DF: Every company or product that I’ve started is really just to solve my own personal frustrations as a gamer. I always felt like PC gamers in particular were neglected in a lot of the tools. I don’t know how many of you date back to those years, but to play with friends, you would first load up a server browser- I think at the time it was GameSpy, The All-Seeing Eye or one of those- and you’d find a server to play on, could be any game like Quake or Counter Strike, you’d log into the server, then you’d have to cut and paste the 17-digit IP address, Alt-Tab out, send out an AOL Instant Message to your buddy, “Yo, here, come join me”, and hope that he makes it into the server before it fills up, right? I always felt that it was ass-backwards, and it used to bug the hell out of me. AOL used to have that flashing window, and it would pop you out of the game, so you could be in the middle of a match and it would steal the focus away, and you’d get plopped out into the desktop at the worst possible moment. I really wanted to build something that fixed all of those issues. AOL Instant Messager never would have done that- we just had to build it from scratch.

At Xfire, we literally invented the concept of a “Buddy List” where you could actually see the game that they’re playing- that did not exist. Steam has all this stuff now, but there was nothing that had that; the concept of your status being the game that you’re playing, being able to see what your friends are playing- we invented that. We invented the ability to one-click join whatever server your buddies are on, we invented the concept of an in-game overlay. So all of these applications that have things like a pop-up in Steam where someone sends you a message, and it just pops up in the game while you’re playing- you don’t have to Alt-Tab out or anything- we invented that at Xfire as well. We didn’t expect it to be as successful as it was. We literally just built it for ourselves, and it just worked out.

PA: Did you play much of the new DOOM, and do you see any room for improvement in the multiplayer?

DF: I kinda skipped the new DOOM, to be honest. I think I skipped it because my friends told me the multiplayer wasn’t that great. (laughs) And I have limited time to play. I was kind of playing League and- mostly League for quite a while. I’m not the type that plays multiple games at the same time. Typically when I get into a game, I’m all in- I feel like that’s how I can improve the most. So for me, context shifting-between different games is not ideal, because I feel like a lot of improvement happens subconsciously? At least for me, I’ll play a bunch of matches, and then I’m taking a shower and something just clicks. The next time I start playing, I’m just way better. But that only happens for me if I’m like fully immersed in the game. Other than learning the maps and stuff, there’s all these tiny nuances that the average person doesn’t really notice. And when you add it all up, that what makes a good player a great player.

JS: So, haven’t really spent a lot of time with the new DOOM, but now that you’re involved with businesses like Raptr, do you have time to revisit the old Doom and old Quake?

DF: Generally not, although I think it was probably a month or two ago, PC Gamer reached out to me- I think it was the 10th or 20th Anniversary of Quake? They were like, “Hey, we’re putting up a Quake World server, and we’re going to be live-streaming it, and you get to play with the PC Gamer staff,” and stuff. And they were like, “Do you want to come login for an hour and play?” So I was like, “Yeah sure, why not?” So I actually installed Quake World, hopped on the server and played for probably an hour. It felt great- it’s still an incredibly fun game to play. There’s not a whole lot of games that are like it, in my opinion. Part of the beauty of Quake to me was that it was not perfectly balanced in terms of weapons and stuff? I think that’s what made it both challenging and fun to play.

DW: If you had to choose between Doom and Quake, one has to go, and why?

DF: If I had to choose one to go, it would probably be…Doom, just because those were the super early days of online gaming? Now, Doom is probably the single reason why I got into gaming. I didn’t play any of the consoles, I wasn’t into Mario Bros, I wasn’t really even into single-player games. I actually don’t think I ever finished Doom or Quake single-player. So what drove me to these games was the ability to play against a real person in real time, which Doom was one of the first to introduce that concept. But you know, Quake is where I won the Ferrari, Quake is really where I think I became truly famous in the gaming community. So yeah, I couldn’t possibly not have that. (laughs)