Difference between revisions of "Epic Games"

Revision as of 16:24, 19 July 2008

Epic Games, once Epic MegaGames, is a game development company based in Raleigh/Cary, North Carolina, USA. They created the Unreal Engine and the corresponding Unreal games, as well as licensed the Engine to other companies for a huge number of games. In addition, Epic was primarily responsible for the smash hit Gears of War.

Epic Games

History

Epic Games was initially founded under the name of Potomac Computer Systems in 1991 by Tim Sweeney in Rockville, Maryland. Potomac Computer Systems released its flagship product, ZZT, the same year. During the latter portion of ZZT's life span, the company became known as Epic MegaGames. Gradually, the Epic brand grew with the advent of its shareware games, including Epic Pinball, Jill of the Jungle, Jazz Jackrabbit and One Must Fall: 2097. During this time, Epic also published and sold games developed by other developers such as those by Safari Software and also XLand's Robbo, Heartlight, and Electro Man; and Renaissance's Zone 66. In 1997 Safari Software was acquired in whole by Epic and some of their titles as well as other pre-1998 games are sold under the Epic Classics brand.

In 1998, Epic MegaGames released Unreal, a 3D first-person shooter, which expanded into a series of Unreal games, including the award-winning game Unreal Tournament. The company also began to license the core technology, or Unreal Engine, used for the series to other game developers. In 1999, the company changed its name to Epic Games and moved its offices, including its Rockville headquarters, to Cary. In 2006, Epic released the Xbox 360 (and now PC) bestseller Gears of War and has completed working on Unreal Tournament 3. A port of Gears of War for Mac OS X is also in the works. On August 20th 2007 they acquired a majority shareholding in Polish developer People Can Fly.

Nowadays Epic Games has little over 100 employees. Its developers include Tim Sweeney (Founder/CEO), Mike Capps (President), Mark Rein (Founder/Vice-President), Jay Wilbur (Vice-President), Cliff Bleszinski (Lead Designer) and Steve Polge (Lead Programmer)

On July 19 2007 Epic was sued by Silicon Knights for alleged abuse of their Unreal Engine contract. Less than a month later Epic filed a motion to dismiss and a counter-claim, saying that "this lawsuit is a cynical effort by SK to unlawfully enrich itself at the expense of Epic Games". In November, Epic's motion to dismiss was denied. A court date for both SK's suit as Epic's counter-suit has yet to be determined.

Unreal Engine

Main Article: Unreal Engine

Epic is the proprietor of three successful game engines in the videogame industry. Each Unreal Engine has a complete feature set of graphical rendering, sound processing, and physics that can be widely adapted to fit the specific needs of a game developer that does not want to code its own engine from scratch. The three engines Epic has created are the Unreal Engine, Unreal Engine 2 and its 2.5 point release adding support for ingame vehicles and improved netcode. Epic's latest release is Unreal Engine 3. It has been used in games such as BioShock, Mass Effect, Rainbow Six: Vegas, Lost Odyssey, Unreal Tournament 3, Medal of Honor: Airborne and Army of Two.

Past Titles

Note: This section only lists the company's "major" releases. For a full list, go here

PC games

• ZZT - (1991)
• Jill of the Jungle - (1992)
• Epic Pinball - (1993) (developed by James Schmalz)
• Jazz Jackrabbit - (1994)
• Unreal - (1998)
• Unreal: RTNP - (1999)
• Unreal Tournament - (1999)
• Unreal Tournament 2003 - (2002)
• Unreal 2: The Awakening - (2003)
• Unreal Tournament 2004 - (2004)
• ]]Gears of War]] - (2007)
• Unreal Tournament 3 - (2007)

Console games

• Unreal Tournament - (2000) PlayStation 2/Dreamcast
• Unreal Championship - (2002) Xbox
• Unreal Championship 2 - (2005) Xbox
• Gears of War - (2006) Xbox 360
• Unreal Tournament 3 - (2007) Playstation 3 / (2008) Xbox 360

Current Projects

• Gears of War 2 - (due for November 2008) Xbox 360
• "A few secret projects" (source)

Links

(Mostly copied from UnrealWiki)

• Company website: http://www.epicgames.com
• Unreal Technology website: http://www.unrealtechnology.com/html/homefold/home.shtml
• Official Unreal-engine modding information:
  • Unreal Developer Network: http://udn.epicgames.com
  • Unreal engine news: http://unreal.epicgames.com
• Games created by or with help of Epic:
  • Unreal: http://www.Unreal.com
  • Unreal 2: http://www.Unreal2.com
  • Unreal Tournament: http://www.UnrealTournament.com
  • Unreal Tournament 2003: http://www.UnrealTournament2003.com
  • Unreal Tournament 2004: http://www.UnrealTournament2004.com
  • Unreal Championship:
  • Unreal Championship 2: http://www.UnrealChampionship2.com