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Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney changed video game industry

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Re: Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney changed video game industry

#41

Post by m-p-3 »

Mirioron wrote: post #38
cdubzzz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t played Fortnite, but this sounds (at least partially) like Battlefield 2 about 15 years ago — huge 64 player maps with fast paced action. I remember at the time being amazed that I could fly jets and helicopters, drive tanks, or just scurry around on foot all in one game. I played many, many hours of that. The base game did not have building or many interactive objects but there were a couple of custom mods…

I get where you're coming from and it is an evolution in it, but Fortnite does have more players per map. And the map is a lot bigger. The interactable objects and building is what make it quite different technically. With games where building stuff is just tacked on, you'll find that performance drops very quickly after just a few hundred objects are placed. This limits building significantly. The interactive object…

Rust (survival game) actually handles a lot of placeable elements in a huge map quite well, and the main focus of the game is PvP and strategic base-building.

Fortnite is more accessible being cross-platform and a more family-friendly (Rust has its share of naked people running on beaches/spawn points)

Re: Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney changed video game industry

#42

Post by dogma1138 »

Mirioron wrote: post #13
dleslie wrote: post #2

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 lim…

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…

Fortnite doesn’t offer anything new, it is however very polished and accessible game with a good gaming loop that is easy to pickup but has enough depth to be hard to master.

It also runs rather well across a wide range of hardware and devices.

Re: Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney changed video game industry

#43

Post by KaoruAoiShiho »

smackay wrote: post #23
cloudking wrote: post #6

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..

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.

Just another darwinian filter. People who overinvest in the metaverse will select themselves out of the gene pool.

Re: Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney changed video game industry

#44

Post by sudosysgen »

yedpodtrzitko wrote: post #40
philliphaydon wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can remember how Steam was getting shit in its early versions too. But if they would wait with the release until the product would be complete/perfect, they would never ship it. So taking the approach of Minimum Viable Product + adding features as they go feels reasonable to me, even for the price of imperfection (a temporarily one, hopefully).

When steam came out, there wasn't scalable cloud infrastructure, they didn't have literally billions of dollars, are there weren't any real expectations. Epic games pretty much has no excuse.

Re: Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney changed video game industry

#45

Post by Mirioron »

m-p-3 wrote: post #41
Mirioron wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get where you're coming from and it is an evolution in it, but Fortnite does have more players per map. And the map is a lot bigger. The interactable objects and building is what make it quite different technically. With games where building stuff is just tacked on, you'll find that performance drops very quickly after just a few hundred objects are placed. This limits building significantly. The interactive object…

Rust (survival game) actually handles a lot of placeable elements in a huge map quite well, and the main focus of the game is PvP and strategic base-building. Fortnite is more accessible being cross-platform and a more family-friendly (Rust has its share of naked people running on beaches/spawn points)

You're not wrong about Rust, but Rust was in beta for so long that Fortnite and Rust had their full release in the same year.

Re: Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney changed video game industry

#46

Post by _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.

Re: Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney changed video game industry

#47

Post by friendlybus »

coderunner wrote: post #24

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 be…

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.

Re: Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney changed video game industry

#48

Post by mattmanser »

Mirioron wrote: post #38
cdubzzz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t played Fortnite, but this sounds (at least partially) like Battlefield 2 about 15 years ago — huge 64 player maps with fast paced action. I remember at the time being amazed that I could fly jets and helicopters, drive tanks, or just scurry around on foot all in one game. I played many, many hours of that. The base game did not have building or many interactive objects but there were a couple of custom mods…

I get where you're coming from and it is an evolution in it, but Fortnite does have more players per map. And the map is a lot bigger. The interactable objects and building is what make it quite different technically. With games where building stuff is just tacked on, you'll find that performance drops very quickly after just a few hundred objects are placed. This limits building significantly. The interactive object…

You are a bit out-of-touch in games if you're comparing a 9 year old game like Skyrim when saying Fortnite is revolutionary.

You missed the Day-Z mod for Arma 3 (released 2013), H1Z1 popularised the battle royale genre before shooting itself in the foot, and of course PUBG picking up the baton.

As for building in multiplayer you've got years of work before, putting aside Minecraft, you've got 7 Days to Die, Rust, Arc Survival:Evolved.

Fortnite's not even got particularly complicated building compared to many of those other games.

The article is total dross, Epic took an existing genre and slapped Valve's already proven monetization strategy on it. Other companies were already copying Valve before Epic. Both DOTA + TF2 have been free and make money from hats for over a decade! There's been jokes about it for years[1].

I'm not saying that Fortnite's not good, I'm not saying it's not a massive success, but revolutionary or innovative it was not. This puff piece is obviously written by a someone who hasn't got a clue about games.

You can even argue that they took a failed game's assets and cobbled together a battle-royale shooter and, almost accidentally, became massively successful. Right place, right time. Overwatch did much the same thing. Several other companies failed doing exactly the same thing (e.g. Battleborn, H1Z1)

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/12kirq/valve_market...

Re: Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney changed video game industry

#49

Post by lancesells »

dleslie wrote: post #2

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 lim…

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.

Re: Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney changed video game industry

#50

Post by spats1990 »

jokoon wrote: post #27

I wish PUBG would not be so slow.

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.
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