The legendary founder of the legendary company: a game sold for 22 years, a person said “no” to Apple

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Text | Du Chen Editor | Vicky Xiao

Source: Silicon Stars

A few days ago, a Zhihu answer “exploded”.

Someone posted a question on Zhihu: “Why are some people in their thirties and forties still addicted to games?”

It seems like a commonplace question, but I didn’t expect one of the answers to get 27,000 likes and more than 1,500 comments.

Who is Epic? Why does it dare to use the official account to answer “It’s none of your business” today, when all major official accounts are striving to make no mistakes, and it seems that it has gained a lot of popularity?

That may start with Epic’s own unique charm.

| The wonderful work of the game

As a game company founded in 1991, it has always taken an unusual path. Even in the game industry, the way the company operates and the personality of the founder are unique:

All other major game companies have been listed, but this is the only one, even if it has received a large amount of venture capital and strategic investment, it has not been listed for more than 30 years since its establishment, and basically the founder still has the final say;

Other big companies can’t wait to launch more than a dozen similar games every year, and the styles are becoming more and more similar, making people feel repetitive and boring. It is the only one that has only concentrated on making three games in recent years, and they are all well-received;

More importantly, other big factories have the taste of “big companies”, with strict management and external blockade. However, this only one still operates as a “small workshop”. For example, for player-made mods and fan-made fan content and websites involving trademarks and IP, it has almost no restrictions, and completely rejects any game ideas and content submitted by external parties…

What’s even more outrageous is that the game is given to players for free every month, many of which are serious AAA works, which indirectly leads to the fact that their game mall is still losing money. I am afraid that other big game manufacturers will not be able to do it in this life.

This game company is Epic Games.

The number of games it has developed in the past 30 years is very small, but each of them is a boutique: “Fortress Night”, which many people know, can be called the only phenomenon-level game in recent years, not only has many players, but also jumped out of the game. In the classic category of games, cross-border activities such as movie conferences, premieres, and live concerts have been successfully held on the server for many times, which has become the prototype of the “metaverse” that has attracted much attention in recent years.

What few people know is that the company’s predecessor, the first game “ZZT” released in 1991, has been on sale for 22 years, and finally sold the last copy in 2013, which can be said to be the most “” Longevity” single-item game.

In the past ten years, although Epic Games has accepted strategic investment from Tencent and Sony, as well as private equity investment from many of the most well-known funds in the financial industry, founder Tim Sweeney’s equity still exceeds 50%, and the company is still under his “one person control”. “.

Not to mention that Sweeney himself is also a well-known god in the industry. Although he is in charge of a company with a valuation of 32 billion US dollars and his net worth has reached tens of billions, he still does it himself. Writing code for the company’s products and personal hobby projects, and attending gatherings and talk shows in the game circle are his daily routines.

But as long as he doesn’t like the eye, no matter who he is, he dares to challenge even if he is as strong as Apple: because he is dissatisfied with the way Apple takes a cut in the iOS mall, under his leadership, Epic directly sued Apple in the anti-monopoly court. After 300 rounds of battle, he became a “knight” in the hearts of the game industry, especially the small and medium-sized developers who suffered from Apple’s cut.

| Reinventing the “wheel”, but creating a game

Epic Games started when Tim Sweeney was a teenager.

Tim Sweeney’s eldest brother, Steve, is 15 years older, worked in tech in San Diego, Calif., has a beachfront house, and a cool car. Sweeney then often went to visit her brother during school holidays.

However, when he arrived in San Diego, what really made him fall in love was not the beautiful scenery and cool sports cars, but his brother’s IBM computer. During his time with Steve, he learned assembly language as well as BASIC programming. According to Sweeney, he probably spent more time coding during school than sleeping, attending classes and doing other things.

Later, Sweeney went to the University of Maryland to major in mechanical and electrical engineering. When he was programming in college, he was very dissatisfied with the mainstream editors and programming languages ​​on MS-DOS, so he decided to write one himself.

However, like many engineers’ hobby projects, it didn’t take long for Sweeney to stop working on it. When he was bored, he decided to change the cursor of this editor to a small smiley face, and changed it. This editor is no longer an editor at all, and its interface has become a scene similar to a game.

This editor is the later ZZT.

At that time, Sweeney also founded a computer technology consulting company, but everyone should see it: I was busy writing editors every day, and the result was a game. This consulting company’s business cannot be good. Sweeney originally planned to close the company, but seeing that he didn’t keep up with his studies, and the company didn’t do a good job, in the end, he fiddled with such a game, and nothing was accomplished… So he decided to try this game. sell it.

Unexpectedly, after ZZT was released as a shareware, it quickly attracted the attention of many computer users, not only in this state, but even out-of-state consumers sent him checks, hoping to buy the official version.

ZZT is really a game, but don’t forget it started out as an editor – that’s what makes ZZT most interesting.

Many computer users at the time had considerable programming knowledge. In ZZT, what these users see is not a simple game, but a development environment with great potential. Like Minecraft and Roblox, which are popular today, ZZT is both a game and a tool that has a low barrier to entry and unleashes player creativity.

ZZT is considered by many old players to be the first game developed using object-oriented programming, and the nature of the editor makes it a game development tool. Users can modify the ZZT program by themselves, develop external modules, and even create their own games.

During the early 1992, ZZT was selling twenty or thirty copies a week, and Sweeney was earning about $100 a day. Father Paul was very pleased to see his son’s “successful career” at a young age, and the civil servant took the initiative to undertake the responsibilities of game production (mainly copying to 3.5-inch floppy disks) and shipping. More than two decades after the game’s original release, Paul was still serving as “COO and Shipping Officer” for his son’s company’s sub-brand, Epic Classics.

The first battle was a success, Sweeney tasted the thrill of game production for the first time, decided to transform the consulting company into game development, and changed the name to Epic MegaGames. He said the name was chosen to deceive customers into thinking the company was particularly big.

In 2013, Paul Sweeney sent the last physical copy of the ZZT game from his home, where his son started his business.

In this way, Epic Games’ first game, ZZT, has also become the most “long-lived” and longest-selling word game in the entire game industry.

Due to its high degree of customizability, until today, ZZT has more than 3000 self-made mods, making this game also a pioneer in the development of user-made game mods. Sweeney also claimed that he knew many people who later engaged in game development who were once ZZT modders.

| The Story Behind Unreal Engine

After the game company was officially launched, Sweeney recruited more like-minded partners. For two years from 1993 to 1994, he served as the company’s manager and “cheerleader”, supporting colleagues to continue to develop more products, and as a producer of some external cooperative development projects.

In 1994, James Schmalz, founder of Canadian game company Digital Extreme, wanted to develop a 3D game. Schmalz is a game genius programming god. He writes games directly in assembly language, and the tools are very rough and simple, and sometimes even write demos directly on paper. Sweeney saw Schmalz’s demo and couldn’t help but admire that he was a genius, and felt sorry for his poor tools, so he kindly invited him to work with him again (Epic had previously released a pinball game developed by Digital Extreme), and promised to write the code himself Build him a useful level editor.

What Sweeney had in mind was not only to develop the best 3D FPS game, but also to follow in the footsteps of his idol Carmack and develop the best 3D game engine.

In 1995, the most important project in the history of Epic MegaGames was finally officially approved. Before that, the development team of a game in the company usually had a maximum of three people, and one person could complete it when there were fewer. The company could carry three or four game projects to develop at the same time. The 3D FPS game this time not only requires a large number of developers and artists, the team size has reached 20 or 30 people, and the path of parallel development of the game and engine chosen by Sweeney also brings huge risks and significantly increases the cost. .

One of the company’s executives, Mark Rein, even maxed out his credit cards. “For the development of this game, we basically smashed all the profits from previous games,” Sweeney revealed.

After a three-year development period, Epic MegaGames has finally officially released “Unreal” (Unreal), and the game’s Unreal Engine (Unreal Engine).

“Unreal” has been well received by the game evaluation media and players. After its release, its weekly sales surpassed that of “StarCraft”, and even launched a month-long battle for the sales champion with this RTS game developed by Blizzard Entertainment, and finally ranked second. second. Three years after its release, the game eventually locked in 1.5 million lifetime sales.

Unreal is the work of two gaming geniuses, Schmalz and Cliff “CliffyB” Bleszinski, but Unreal Engine is the culmination of four years of Sweeney’s work. About 90% of the code of the entire engine is written by himself.

It can even be said that the real core of the entire Unreal project lies in the Unreal Engine.

After the release, rival Carmack praised Unreal Engine for major innovations in game technology, including the adoption of 16-bit high color, and the realization of similar volumetric fog effects: “Flood spheres, volumetric fog, and composite The sky effect is what I plan to achieve. However, today Epic’s Unreal (engine) has already taken a step ahead of me.”

Carmack’s endorsement has made Unreal Engine the most concerned tool in the game development industry. With the subsequent iterations of Unreal Engine, Epic Games decided to develop a new 3D third-person shooter game to showcase the powerful technical capabilities of the next-generation Unreal Engine 3.

This game is exclusive to Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 platforms, and because it is so popular, Microsoft simply bought the entire IP series “Gears of War” (Gears of War). It became the fastest game to reach 3 million sales on the Xbox 360 platform, and attracted the attention of more third-party developers.

As of today, a number of well-known developers, including Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard, and Rockstar, are using Unreal Engine for development. For any game that uses Unreal Engine, Epic Games can take a small licensing fee from sales — as a result, the existence of Unreal Engine has brought Epic Games a huge and steady income.

However, the legend of this game company has not yet reached its climax.

| Tencent, “Fortnite”, and the era of “Games as a Service”

After the release of Unreal Engine, especially in the years of iteration from Unreal Engine 3 to 4, Epic Games in the eyes of the outside world was a bit disoriented and lost its “entrepreneurship”: Although there are still many external developers using Unreal Engine, for this The company has brought a lot of income, and some of its self-developed games, including Fortnite, which was announced to be developed in 2011, have fallen into a state of development stagnation.

Internally, however, Tim Sweeney has a clear judgment on the future direction of the company and the industry. Specifically, Sweeney believes that the future of Epic Games as a game publisher may not be optimistic, because the business model of the entire game industry, like the entire technology industry, is facing a “service-oriented” transformation.

In the game industry, the concept of “games as a service” triggered a revolution at that time, and game developers had to seek revenue methods other than game sales, including point cards/monthly cards, in-game purchases, etc.

Tencent is considered one of the earliest advocates of the concept of “games as a service”, and many online games developed and operated by it have achieved great success. Sweeney recognized this very much, so he found Tencent directly in 2012, hoping to get help in the transformation of “games as a service”, in exchange for accepting a 48.4% stake in Tencent’s strategic investment.

However, the veteran of Epic Games is very difficult to accept Tencent’s investment. These developers are themselves hardcore players and diehards of the traditional game development model. They stubbornly believed at the time that:

Game developers should spend money, time, and effort to make games with “grand plots, beautiful stories, and far-reaching influence”, and then sell them for decent money.

At that time, in their opinion, the popular DLC, season tickets and other content development rhythms of “off-plan”-style content development, and the practice of not putting high-quality equipment directly in the base game, but turning it into paid props purchased in the game – Freemium like this, or even a paid-for-additional value-added model, turns game developers into bad dealers, which is simply disgraceful.

Therefore, during the period of Tencent’s investment, more than a dozen core veterans of Epic Games have left. It is precisely because of these major personnel changes that some game development projects within Epic Games have been suspended to varying degrees during that time.

Sweeney saw it clearly. He knew in his heart that the games of the future should be “living games”: a game series can not be redeveloped and released every one or two years, but can rely on the online mode to add new game content, Props, patterns, etc., to achieve sustainability.

He is willing to accept temporary setbacks in order to be able to successfully implement the “games-as-a-service” transformation. Epic Games continued to dormant until Fortnite came out.

The “Fortnite” project was actually announced in 2011, and then there was almost no news for six years. It was not until 2017 that Epic Games finally launched the game’s massively multiplayer online battle royale mode (also commonly known as the “chicken eating” mode) – “Fortnite: Airborne”.

The mode of pure free play + in-app purchase of skin items has attracted a large number of young players into the pit. In less than a year, the chicken-eating mode of “Fortress Night” reached 125 million players, surpassing the number of players in “Minecraft” at that time. A large number of players, related e-sports competitions, and YouTube and short video content produced by loyal fans have made the “Fortnite” chicken-eating mode a social phenomenon far beyond the game.

At the commercial level, as the game project with the greatest commercial success in the history of Epic Games, the entire development process of “Fortress Night” basically also runs through the company’s transformation from a traditional developer and publisher to a service provider. process.

However, even after implementing the “game as a service” concept for many years, Epic Games was once entangled in how the chicken-eating mode of “Fortnite” should work. Specifically, whether to put the chicken-eating mode in the paid main game, or release it directly as an independent game.

Ultimately, two weeks before its official launch in 2017, Epic Games made up its mind to choose the latter. Even more interesting is that within the gaming environment, Epic Games and partners have successfully hosted a variety of non-game events including Star Wars movie launches and fan meetings, live electronic concerts, and more. This new form of in-game events makes the chicken-eating mode of “Fortnite” a prototype of a concept similar to the “metaverse”.

The popularity and lasting success of this game in the European and American markets have also proved the correctness and forward-looking of the concept of “Game as a Service” advocated by Epic Games and Tencent.

| Single-handedly challenge Apple

Friends who follow Silicon Stars may remember that in 2020 we reported that Epic Games suddenly launched an antitrust lawsuit against Apple.

At that time, the chicken-eating mode of “Fortress Night” suddenly added a direct payment channel on the iOS and Android clients, skipping the revenue model of the Apple App Store and Google Play app store, which led to Apple’s sudden pain in the killer game. Removed from App Store.

As a result, within an hour of being taken off the shelves, Epic Games’ complaint has been submitted to the California court in the United States, and the company also released a parody of Apple’s original commercial film “1984” video, turning “Big Brother” in the original film into a Apple itself.

Epic Games is an old friend of Apple and has been on the stage of Apple’s conference many times. However, in the face of the app store commission commonly known as “Apple tax” and various harsh listing review systems, Epic Games has become the first big company in the game industry to dare to tear up with Apple.

In the eyes of the outside world, Epic Games also has “separate” selfish intentions for Apple’s anti-water, that is, it wants the company’s game/application mall Epic Games Store to land on the iOS platform, on an equal footing with the App Store:

From Sweeney’s point of view, though, he insists it’s for the good of players, giving them cheaper services and giving them back options they’ve been deprived of for too long.

At this point, whether you believe him or not, at least give free games to players in the game mall all day long, which indirectly leads to the loss of money in the mall business so far – such a thing, Epic Games can do it.

There are other examples of what Sweeney is doing for the benefit of players. For example, Sony’s latest generation of game console PS5, it was only at the insistence of Sweeney that it was equipped with the original solid-state drive.

Before that, because of the poor performance, high noise and high heat of the original mechanical hard drive, many players would replace the solid state drive for the PS4 host by themselves. Sony system architect Mark Cerny once revealed in an interview that since the PS4 era, Sweeney has been asking Sony for SSDs all day long, “He said that hard drives are dragging down the entire gaming industry. He didn’t even say hard drives, but called them ‘ ‘rusty spinning media’.”

That’s why we saw the official launch of Unreal Engine 5 on the PS5 – the key components on this console, including the SSD, were in part to show the full power of Unreal Engine 5 and succumb to Sweeney’s ” Power”, which made it what it is today.

The two most well-known company financings in the history of Epic Games should be two strategic investments by Tencent in 2012 and Sony in 2020. However, in the two years since the outbreak began, the company has completed several PE financings, and the investors are all well-known institutions in the industry: Lightspeed Venture Partners, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, BlackRock, GIC ( Singapore Sovereign Fund) etc.

However, even with so many outside investments, Tim Sweeney himself remains the largest shareholder in Epic Games, holding more than 50% of the shares.

As a game billionaire, Sweeney also lost himself in his early years. More than 20 years ago, the release of “Unreal” and the first generation of Unreal Engine made him a multi-millionaire. He also bought a Ferrari and a Lamborghini and placed them in the parking lot in front of his apartment, causing the neighbors to think he was a drug dealer.

Later, as the company became more and more successful, Sweeney became more and more low-key. He invested more of his own money in environmental causes, buying a blockbuster in North Carolina, where the company is located. The land is ecologically restored, and then donated to non-profit organizations for further ecological protection and scientific research operations.

He didn’t buy a new sports car, but gave all players the opportunity to “drive a sports car”: last year, Ferrari and Epic Games had an unprecedented cooperation, using Unreal Engine to design the car body, and in “Fortress” 296 GTB sports car released in the night game.

At some of the tea parties and player meet-ups that Epic Games often holds, you can still see Tim Sweeney as a guest to chat with colleagues, players, and fans about your favorite game topics.

Moreover, he still insists on working on the front line, contributing code to the company’s products and some core projects, and is deeply involved in the actual development of the “metaverse” strategy initiated by the company in the past two years (in fact, he was in the company as early as 2009. Research the technical problems of virtual human).

On his social network accounts, you can also see him writing code in languages ​​such as C++ using the classic IBM Model M keyboard. Even, he is still learning Chinese, and recently posted a screenshot of himself using the Chinese version of the Unreal Engine editor.

In the current game industry, although the business model of Epic Games and its competitors are gradually converging, the company’s operation status is still out of tune with the entire industry, which makes it more popular among gamers and industry insiders.

Tim Sweeney is still the same, a hard-working, friendly, low-key game developer, in the world of video games, writing legends in his own way.

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