Tim sweeney
Latest
EU regulators probe Apple's latest Epic Games takedown
The EU will question Apple over the legitimacy of its decision to ban Epic Games' developer account. It's the latest in a series of clashes between the two tech companies.
Unreal Engine will get more expensive, but not for game devs
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney says the company is adjusting Unreal Engine pricing for non-gaming developers in fields like film, TV and automotive. However, it won’t affect game developers.
Google tenatively settles with US antitrust probe into Play Store dominance
Attorneys general and consumers from 37 states alleged that Google held an unfair monopoly on Android devices.
Epic Games receives $2 billion investment from Sony and Lego's parent company
No prizes for guessing that it'll use the cash to help build its vision of the metaverse.
Apple won't let 'Fortnite' back on the App Store until all court appeals are exhausted
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said the process could last another five years.
Epic Games asks a court to make Apple put 'Fortnite' back in the App Store
Epic is suing Apple claiming it's abusing market dominance, and now a filing is trying to put 'Fortnite' back in the App Store on iOS while the case proceeds.
Indie history: How shareware helped build Epic Games
"When [Epic] popped up and said, ‘We're redefining the publishing deal,’ it made me chuckle." - Mike Wilson, co-founder of Devolver Digital
Epic will continue to sign Steam games to exclusive store deals
So much for hopes that Epic would stop signing developers to exclusives for its Games Store. While the company suggested at the Game Developers Conference that it would ramp down its push for exclusives, CEO Tim Sweeney has since said Epic would be "open to continuing" its practice of signing exclusives for its shop, whatever a developer's previous plans were for Steam. The decision to switch stores had to be up to developers and publishers, he added, and Epic wouldn't turn them down just because of what had already been said about Steam.
Epic Games has 250 million 'Fortnite' players and a lot of plans
When Tim Sweeney built ZZT in 1991, he didn't know how to program graphics. Instead of coding actual characters and objects into his game, he used text symbols, and the main character was simply a smiley face trailing across the screen. "That included both a game goal, and just running through levels and shooting monsters," Sweeney told Engadget at the Game Developers Conference. "It also included an editor so everybody could build their own levels."
Five legendary indie developers walk into a room...
Over the past few years, the definition of "indie" has expanded exponentially. It now includes the five men invited to speak to an audience of developers in a cavernous room at GDC's North hall: Jordan Mechner (Prince of Persia), Tim Sweeney (Epic Games), John Romero (Doom), Adam Saltsman (Canabalt) and Markus "Notch" Persson (Minecraft)."Indie" now includes "rockstar."These five spoke at "Back to the Garage: The Return of Indie Development (From Those Who Were There and Some Who've Just Arrived)," and without specifically addressing the concrete idea behind what makes indie "indie," they helped define the term in its modern trappings. "Indie" involves listening to feedback from outside sources. "Indies" create AAA titles. "Indie" means talking to press, managing staff and marketing a game while respecting other people's time. "Indie" is about making money.Being indie doesn't sound so different than standard publisher-style game creation, mostly because it's not -- indie is now a sub-genre of game development, rather than a separate enterprise. It's in the tone with which these developers speak about the business, their independent passion and the amount of risk they're willing to take that offers a clear distinction from the sterile PR BS often found in the campaigns from large publishers.
Epic's Tim Sweeney being inducted into AIAS Hall of Fame
The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences has announced the 16th inductee to its Hall of Fame, a catalog which already contains literal game-changers like Peter Molyneux, Sid Meier and Will Wright. To be added to that list during the Interactive Achievement Awards at the 2012 D.I.C.E. Summit in February: Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney. You've almost certainly heard of him -- if not, you've definitely heard of the Unreal Engine, which he helped create. If you haven't heard of that, what is wrong with you? The Interactive Achievement Awards, which will be presented February 9, will see Epic VP Mark Rein bestowing the honor upon Sweeney. We anticipate that his speech will include humorous jabs at one or more of Sweeney's lesser-known idiosyncrasies, as well as a heart-touching stanza about how he's not just a good boss, but a great friend. We're getting a little choked up just thinking about it.
Epic Games' Tim Sweeney talks Unreal Engine 4, be patient until 'around 2014'
Epic (Mega) Games co-founder and CEO Tim Sweeney is one of our favorite people in the whole, wide gaming world, and it's not just because he told this writer that he reads Joystiq every day. While id's John Carmack is often placed atop our industry's tech pedestal, it's Tim Sweeney whose work on Unreal Engine not only shapes the way video games look but the business models behind how they're created. So when Sweeney talks about the elusive and intangible Unreal Engine 4, we pay attention. "I spend about 60 percent of my time every day doing research work that's aimed at our next generation engine and the next generation of consoles," Sweeney told IGN, adding that this "technology that won't see the light of day until probably around 2014." Sweeney compared this early work to his work on the original Unreal engine in 1996, which introduced "a bunch of new features that hadn't been seen before." Sweeney said, "I feel like that's what I'm doing now on Unreal Engine 4 in exploring areas of the technology nobody else is really yet contemplating because they're still a few years away from practicality." There are two primary technical challenges facing video games today, Sweeney said. The first, and most addressable, is the need to scale up "to tons of CPU cores." While UE3 can divide discrete processes across a handful of cores, "once you have 20 cores" it isn't that simple "because all these parameters change dynamically as different things come on screen and load as you shift from scene to scene." These advancements will help achieve "movie quality graphics" since that outcome has been limited primarily by horsepower. "We just haven't been able to do it because we don't have enough terra flops or petta flops of computer power to make it so," Sweeney said. Less likely to be conquered in the next 10 years: the "simulation of human aspects of the game experience," Sweeney explained. "We've seen very, very little progress in these areas over the past few decades so it leaves me very skeptical about our prospects for breakthroughs in the immediate future." So, to wrap up: Over the next ten years, the aliens / Nazis / zombies / bug monsters in your video games will appear in "movie quality," but will still be pretty stupid. [Image credit: Forbes]
Epic Games' Tim Sweeney turned into a game character
Man, are you guys ready to get meta? Epic Games founder (and Unreal Engine mastermind) Tim Sweeney was recently the subject of an Unreal Tournament 3 skin crafted by artist Gary Storkamp. Apparently, the guy is crazy about Burger King. And about hitting dudes with his keyboard.
City of Heroes first ever livestream developer chat
When speaking to this reporter outside the City of Heroes panel at PAX East, producer Nate Birkholz could not emphasize the importance of the community enough. In fact, according to a post back in January, the whole team has upped developer communication to the fans. The players of CoH really help steer this mighty superhero MMO, and the development team wishes to have as many opportunities to speak to its committed community members as possible. Next Thursday, John "Protean" Hegner and Tim "Black Scorpion" Sweeney of the development team and Andy "Zwillinger" Belford and André "Beastyle" Carlos of Paragon's community team will be on UStream to help promote the upcoming Issue 20 and answer viewer questions. For the first time ever, Paragon Studios is opening its doors to video livestream. As an intrepid fan, you will have to watch every minute on the edge of your desk chair. On March 31st from 9:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. EDT, tune in to the official City of Heroes UStream channel to catch all the latest news from Paragon City.
Exclusive: Designing the expanded Incarnate trees for City of Heroes
It was rumored for a while and confirmed at PAX East -- Issue 20 of City of Heroes will feature four new Incarnate slots for characters to improve their abilities. That means a huge breadth of new power and ability choices for everyone, and it should lead to some very interesting gameplay once the four new slots become more common among players, especially as the Incarnate abilities aren't tied to any specific archetype or power selection. Of course, that means there are all sorts of new issues for the Paragon Studios team to deal with as the powers go through the phases of design. In this exclusive developer diary, Tim Sweeney, system designer on City of Heroes, has given us the lowdown on how the new endgame slots were conceived and designed. Jump on past the cut to see how the four newest slots were put together for the upcoming patch, from concept to balancing issues.
Unreal Engine 3 shown on NGP
Tim Sweeney from Epic Games showed up at tonight's PlayStation Meeting to reveal that Unreal Engine 3 works on the NGP -- which shouldn't be much of a surprise, given that the device was shown running PS3 games, and UE3 runs on phones. Speaking of phones, the game demonstrated was Dungeon Defenders, which is currently available for Android and iPhone. Sweeney also showed an updated version of the "Epic Citadel" tech demo.
City of Heroes developer diary: Challenging the gods
Issue 19 brings a big change to characters in City of Heroes. There's always been a line of thought running through comic books that superheroes are essentially modern deities, but when you start stepping into the Incarnate system, the comparison becomes far more straightforward: You are wielding the powers of gods. Just like Statesman and Lord Recluse, player characters will be empowered beyond the ken of mortals and will begin the road toward a new apex of ability. Of course, when you're making such huge changes to the fabric of the game, you need more than just a quick stir in the patcher. A great deal of work went into elevating characters to deification, and that's precisely what the latest City of Heroes developer diary covers. Tim "Black Scorpion" Sweeney has penned an entry on what went into the design of the Incarnate system, so skip on past the break to see how players go from being mere mortals to Incarnates... within the game, anyhow.
New short and sweet Jumpgate Evolution trailer
Jumpgate Evolution is a game that many around the Massively offices have been anticipating with bated breath. It's a game that continues to fly under the radar, despite a gorgeous visual aesthetic and being the product of the fevered minds at NetDevil. While this trailer is somewhat lighter on the gameplay footage than we would liked, it's a refreshing reminder that there is more than just Age of Conan and Warhammer Online in our futures. For this blogger, it's NetDevil's focus on making a game that scales well with a wide range of different hardware configurations that really makes the project really endearing. In an industry so long dominated by Tim Sweeneys, it's nice to see someone like Scott Brown every now again, who will focus on shipping a tight, well-developed experience instead of promising the world and then blaming others when he can't deliver.[Thanks Kevin!]
Unreal Engine 4 to 'exclusively target the next console generation'
The video game industry has no shortage of brilliant, outspoken thinkers and Epic CEO (and Unreal Engine guru) Tim Sweeney is no exception. In a previous installment of his interview with TG Daily, Sweeney said the PC wasn't a good platform for gaming and in this final installment he reveals that Unreal Engine 4 "will exclusively target the next console generation, Microsoft's successor for the Xbox 360, Sony's successor for the PlayStation 3 – and if Nintendo ships a machine with similar hardware specs, then that also." Where does that leave the poor, struggling PC gaming platform? Sweeney says, "PCs will follow after that." Ooh, dissed. While he's not exactly dishing out granular details on the next major iteration of their ubiquitous engine – after all, he did just show us the latest upgrades for Unreal Engine 3 at GDC – Sweeney did share a big picture outlook on the direction of the engine: "scaling to lots and lots of cores." Using the number of cores in the Xbox 360 as a starting point, Sweeney busts out Moore's Law to determine "that around 2010 ... you can put tens of CPU cores on one processor chip and you will have a perfectly usable uniform computing environment." What if he used the PlayStation 3's seven synergistic processing elements as a starting point? The mind staggers ...
Tim Sweeney's beef with Intel and PC gaming
Are PCs good for gaming? The short answer is yes, Tim Sweeney (of Unreal fame) is wrong because computers play many of the best games the platform has to offer without much struggle. Games like The Orange Box, Guild Wars, World of Warcraft, The Sims 2, Company of Heroes or The Lord of the Rings Online all run fairly well without too much muscle behind them. His primary complaint (and ours too, actually) is that integrated graphics chips which are installed on the computers that stores like Best Buy sell, are in no way capable of playing the newer games sold at the very same stores. Intel is largely to blame for this, but of course if you've ever looked into buying a brand new video card, then you know they're not the only culprits of PC gaming's issues.
