Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney changed video game industry

[dleslie]

Fortnite doesn't do anything particularly new; but it does a lot of existing things well, and combines some that haven't been combined well in the past.

I'd like to stake out two wins that define Fortnite's success, to me:

1. It's on every platform that matters, with crossplay.

That's hitherto largely unheard of for games; which is mostly a result of budget restrictions, middleware licensing, and partner contract limitations.

2. Its store combines time-limited access, games of chance, and vanity. You have to keep playing and keep spending in order to look how you want, and how you want to look is coerced to be ever changing by the continual churn of the store.

[Mirioron]

While Fortnite might not do anything new as a business, as a game, on the technical side, it does offer new stuff. Fortnite supports large worlds with lots of players in fast-paced multiplayer. To make matters even more complicated, the players can build large structures in real time. The game also features a large amount of interactable objects with no loading screens. You could say that games like Minecraft do that, but those are graphically much simpler.

[Mdk25]

Both these things came later on (once Fortnite took off).

What Epic actually did do well, was take the most popular game in the world at the time - PUBG, copy it to the T on their own engine, and release it for free (instead of the $20 PUBG cost). That alone made it the most popular game in the world, and allowed them to make money off it, and create ports on all available platforms.

[dx87]

Dota 2 has a similar store for cosmetics, but also includes the ability to sell them on the steam community market, giving Valve a 15% cut in addition to the money they made on the initial sale. People are willing to spend a lot of money gambling on $2.50 lootboxes for cosmetics that can be bought on the community marketplace for 3 cents the following year.

[ksec]

>Fortnite doesn't do anything particularly new; but it does a lot of existing things well, and combines some that haven't been combined well in the past.

The best part is all the fruit of those learning and experience are now part of the Unreal Engine.

[lancesells]

Don't forget it's also free on every platform. That isn't something new either but it's also a big reason for their success.

[hotwire]

Thanks for ZZT Tim. That game changed my life when I was starting high school in the mid 90s; it was one of the ways I learnt to really have fun with computers as well as to program and make my own games.

Also, Unreal Tournament still holds a very fond place in my heart. I don't play games these days, but on the very rare occasion I feel like it, that's one of my major go-tos, just for the nostalgia of Facing-Worlds ;)

[caseyamcl]

Seconded re ZZT. I remember learning HTML so that I could build my first website, which was a ZZT fan website (there were more). That game literally launched my career as a programmer.

My brother and I would sit at the computer for hours building elaborate 8-bit worlds fueled mainly by our imaginations.

When I was 8 years old, I remember participating in a contest for which Tim Sweeney wrote me a personal letter. I’ve saved the letter. Here’s the link if you’re interested: https://www.dropbox.com/s/12o0qgg2y1uzd30/1990-91%20album%20...

Thanks, Tim! It’s not every CEO who goes out of his way to encourage a kid. You inspired me.

[cloudking]

Fortnite is similar to the multiverse in Ready Player One. There have been multiple cross-over events in game, such as:

1) Live DJ show https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/47118989

2) Avengers Endgame promo https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/25/18516452/fortnite-avenger...

3) Star Wars exclusive trailer https://www.wired.com/story/fortnite-star-wars/

It's proving it is more than just a battle royale shooter..

[RenRav]

I think Second Life or VRChat seem to have more similarity with Ready Player One. Maybe not the scale and popularity but everything else.

[smackay]

I think the human race will rue the day it took the first step down the path to a metaverse. Fortnite has already show millions of parents how it's impossible to get their kids to disengage from a game which carries a high social cost of not being involved. The incentives are weighed heavily against individual choice and that can only lead to new forms of slavery.

[Toenex]

This is indeed how Tim sees Fortnite. It's like the MVP of his metaverse idea.

https://blog.siggraph.org/2019/10/siggraph-spotlight-episode...

[jpindar]

In Creative mode it's also a platform for a wide variety of user-created games, not just pvp shooters.

[meheleventyone]

Isn’t that just classic advertising by product placement?

[m4rtink]

That's really nothing new - Azur Lane has cross-over events all the time, for example.

[rumok]

Check out Facebook Horizon. It is eerily similar to The Oasis.

[wyldfire]

> Sweeney isn’t quick to take all the credit for the mostly positive attention “Fortnite” has attracted, telling The Wall Street Journal his employees designed and programmed the game, not himself. Whatever his role, however, Epic has grown leaps and bounds under his leadership.

If it was his decision to make it free-to-play-but-not-pay-to-win, then a good deal of credit is his.

[nolok]

A more important decision was to take Fortnite, the paid co-op against zombie game, and add a free battle royale mode to it

[coderunner]

Tim Sweeney has been extremely kind and generous with his time in all my interactions with him dating back about 10 years ago. I wish him all the success in the world.

Him and Epic are getting a lot of hate on Reddit because of the exclusivity deals, but as a developer, I appreciate Epic trying to get the dev/store revenue split more generous for developers. Valve does the standard 70/30, and Epic is doing 88/12 I believe.

[politelemon]

It isn't just the exclusivity deals, but the manner in which those deals are brought about, often with release promises broken, releases yanked and backers being outright lied to; I do not wish any success to such a business. As a gamer I don't like what the PC gaming landscape is turning into with Epic Games at the forefront of it. As a developer I would expect to consider a wider scope than a revenue split, a big part of which is an ecosystem, platform and tooling.

[friendlybus]

Valve does a lot for the 30% and getting onto the front of the steam store page can make up to eighty percent of a titles revenue. Epic has a lot of work to do.

[archie2]

Personally, I think the best thing to come out of Fortnite is the revenue stream making it feasible for Epic to create its own game store and compete with Valve/Steam.

Steam had been pretty stagnant for years until EGS came along and started poaching exclusives (opinions of this tactic aside) and got them to finally improve their platform.

[thrower123]

The main thing that Epic appears to be doing is taking a big pile of Chinese money and using it to bribe users with free games as a carrot to go along with their stick of exclusivity agreements.

Even that isn't really novel; EA's Origin store did the same thing, until they gave up on trying.

[nottorp]

Damage control campaign to restore some of his rep after the Tencent deal?

[_hudj]

Change doesn't always mean for the better... I think there is a desire to hate on steam and people point to fortnite as the creator of the epic store but steam has provided a reliable and secure platform for literally a decade plus while the epic store has had multiple breaches just this year alone and crashes quite often. The game itself is ok, it exists only because pubg couldn't fix their game though, that and the ability to play it across systems at any age, but to say it's a great game is kind of like saying McDonald's is a great resturant in that it's biggest appeal is that it's cheap, everywhere, and consistent...but that does not make it a great game in ant sense it just makes it a convenient game with market appeal and a payment system that works by getting thousands off of a hand full of people with expendable incomes or a serious problem.

Tl;DR he did alot of things but I don't really think he changed the game industry any more than league of legends or pubg.

[shmerl]

What's going on with parallelized Vulkan renderer in UE? The Trello item was "archived": https://trello.com/c/lzLwtb5P/124-vulkan-for-pc-and-linux

Surprising that Google didn't back that effort with the whole Stadia push.

And there is still no Linux support in Epic store.

[philliphaydon]

Epic store is currently the turd of all game clients. I have a 1gbit connection and can download a 70gb game in 10m on steam. It took me 3 hours to download borderlands 3. I then copied it to my wife’s computer and epic... REDOWNLOADED ALL 63gb AGAIN... over 3 hours...

I wish epic game store didn’t exist.

[moksly]

I don’t like arena games, but they have been popular for a while. From what you can’t avoid picking up from general gaming media, it’s a genre that has been plagued by companies who offered horrible support and user experienced.

It seems like Epic took the best bits of a popular formula and added a decent customer experience to it. Which, if I’m right, is a really nice message.

[jokoon]

I wish PUBG would not be so slow.

[spats1990]

I know exactly what you mean, but it's okay. I don't know if there will be a game to fulfil people's dreams of "exactly like pubg but better" for a long time, if ever. Because it was made mostly by people who I believe had never made an FPS/shooter before, it has a lot of problems, but the people were also able to make exactly what they wanted. A lot of the things about pubg that people think are bad, like how "sluggish" movement feels compared to say, csgo, were deliberate design decisions. It takes a really long time to get anywhere near competent even if you're already used to big multiplayer FPSs. E.g. you have to pick up a weapon then pick up ammo then load it. Anyone who wants to clone PUBG will most likely end up making something with a less brutal learning curve because it takes so much time and resources to make such a thing. In short I think such an idiosyncratic, buggy game with such brutally unforgiving gameplay, massive maps, and realistic bullet physics/weapons becoming a hit was a one off. I tried Apex Legends but it is nothing like pubg really. Even since I was a kid, I haven't played anything that sucked me in like PUBG did in 2017. It's so realistic, variable, and engrossing, and it doesn't hold the player's hand at all. Just my opinion.

[tracerbulletx]

Agreed, but because of Unreal Engine's licensing model change.

[fredsanford]

I stopped reading about 3 paragraphs in when my spidey sense detected a press release...

FWIW