Elon Musk claims he was once one of the best Quake players. The real best Quake player has something to add…
Billionaire and ubiquitous protagonist Elon Musk has stated that he was once one of the best Quake players in the world. In addition, he won money for his skills. This obviously sounds like what your friend would say after the third pint of beer. But the discovery came during an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman. Musk talked about his gaming habits more broadly, and specifically, his inability to defeat Lilith with his Druid in Diablo IV.
“Killing the demons in a videogame calms the demons in my mind,” begins Musk’s digression on his “primary recreational activity”.
“I am 52 so my reflexes are not what they used to be but I have a lifetime of playing video games,” says Musk. “At one point I was maybe one of the best Quake players in the world. I actually won money in what I think was one of the first paid esports tournaments in the US, we’re doing four-person Quake tournaments and we came second .”
“I was the second best person on the team, and the best person… we were actually winning, we would’ve come first but the best person on the team, his computer crashed halfway through the game so we came second. But I got money for it and everything. So basically I got skills. Albeit, you know, no spring chicken these days.”
At this point, you’d be forgiven for going with the “doubt” option, and indeed, there are quite a few people on the internet mocking Musk for his claims about his grandiose Quake capabilities.
There is no doubt that Musk is exaggerating a bit here, but it is true that he has indeed played a lot of Quake. And with very good players. And some of them remember it.
Would Elon Musk really have been such an ace in Quake?
Below is a DJWheat interview with Dennis’ Thresh’ Fong from three years ago. Fong is an esports pioneer and can rightly be called the best Quake player of the 90s. Most famous for winning John Carmack’s Ferrari 328 in a 1997 race. This guy is as legit as it gets. Around the 32-minute mark, Fong says Musk was there.
“Elon Musk, he’s known as a huge gamer, we used to play on the same Quake server, almost every day I’d see him on: Zip2 was his username.”
DJWheat interrupts to ask if Musk was good. Fong laughs and says “he was OK. Uh… he wasn’t very good, but he’s still an OG, he’s legit, when he says he’s a gamer, I saw him every day on this Quake server and a good buddy of mine ended up being the CIO for every one of his companies.”
Fong recently reiterated the above on X (formerly Twitter) when this Musk clip surfaced. “FWIW, I can confirm Elon Musk played a lot of Quake so it’s legit,” wrote Fong. “We played on the same http://kitty1.stanford.edu servers often […] Our mutual friend Branden Spikes might be the good player he was referring to.”
Spikes, for his part, kept his mouth shut. But one of the time veterans was tempted by the news to do a little bragging. “I’m 52 also, Elon. I’ll play against you in Quake any time you want,” thundered Tim Willits, former studio head at id Software. “Elon knows John Carmack but he doesn’t know me. I’d definitely beat him in Quake.”
Which certainly seems to be true, Musk played a hell of a lot of Quake in the 1990s, and if he played almost daily with the likes of Thresh at certain times, he must have been pretty good at it.
The whole thing about him being “one of the best Quake players in the world” just seems like bragging. But in those days the world was not as connected as it is today. It was somewhat easier to become a legend in your own circles. As for the tournament where his team allegedly won money, there is no trace of it.
Despite a lot of people on X lately trying to lure him into 1v1 matches, Musk hasn’t been playing Quake these days anyway. Still playing Diablo IV. As he says, “to be totally frank it’s driving me crazy trying to beat Lilith as a druid [laughs] Trying to beat Hatred Incarnate in the Eternal Realm… it’s really vexing, let me tell you. I would not recommend playing a druid [ …] right now I think the most powerful character is the sorcerer with the lightning balls…”
I’m 52 also, Elon. I’ll play against you in Quake any time you want.
— Tim Willits (@TimWillits) November 20, 2023
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