Thresh is a legend in the Quake franchise and is considered by many to be the first true professional gamer. During his playing days, he was featured across mainstream media including a front page Wall Street Journal article and earned over $100,000 a year in endorsements, all unprecedented at the time. His prowess at Quake and Doom also popularized the now-standard WASD keyboard control scheme for the first person shooter genre.

Thresh is known for his deliberate, control-based playstyle, where he would typically starve opponents of resources rather than relying on pure aim. His style of play led him to numerous victories, such as the the Red Annihilation Quake tournament in Dallas, where his first place prize was a custom modified Ferrari 328 GTS.

After retiring from competitive Quake, Thresh founded GX Media, which built the popular web portal gamers.com, and also co-founded Xfire, an online gaming instant message client that was acquired by Viacom in 2006 for $102 million. He is currently the CEO of the gameplay sharing service plays.tv and Raptr, Inc. a gaming focused software development company.