Epic

Epic's Rainmakers

"It was clear that the shareware business model wasn't going to hold up and sustain growth much longer," Sweeney says. After the internet grew popular, "it wasn't just a couple of shareware companies putting out huge games every once in a while; now there were a whole lot of companies getting into it. And also every retail developer was putting out demos of their games, which directly competed with shareware, too." It was then Sweeney decided the company needed to develop a more robust game, one that could compete in the new environment, and he set to work with Bleszinski and Schmalz to create Unreal.

Though the three had no previous 3-D development experience, they opted to make a shooter using their own technology, which Sweeney personally developed. He says he employed a lot of what he learned from working on his first game, ZZT. Part of what drove ZZT's early sales was its built-in level editor, which allowed players to continually add content to the game. Sweeney actually designed the level editor and added the game's content like a modder would. "A lot of the concepts that really were key to Unreal were actually developed back then in that little game," he says. "The game with a built-in level editor with complete moddability, a built-in scripting language ... all those trends went into the architecture of Unreal."

It ultimately took Sweeney and crew three years to release the first Unreal, built on the company's Unreal Engine. The game itself was a hit, and they enjoyed modest success licensing the engine, but it wasn't until the company integrated a traditional management structure into their operations that they became rainmakers in the game industry.

The Jazz Band Meets The Military
Contrary to Sweeney's office, the place where Dr. Mike Capps does business is actually befitting of a president of a multi-million dollar corporation. He has a large desk that faces the door, huge windows overlooking the company's outdoor basketball court and a sitting area adorned by leather furniture, all directed at an HDTV. It's tasteful but modern, understated but elegant, like a psychiatrist's office mixed with a war room.

Capps' story begins at Duke University, where he was studying to become a flight surgeon in the Air Force. His scholarships dried up during the Gulf War, so he left Duke to pursue a math/creative writing double major at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, "which was cheaper, and the girls were nicer," he says. He then obtained a master's degree in computer science, and eventually found his way to MIT to earn another master's in electrical engineering. He found his way back to the military by way of the Naval Postgraduate School, where he was approached to create America's Army, the military's free-to-play multiplayer combat game/recruiting tool.

Capps jumped at the chance to create the game, but the enormity of the project meant he'd need to use licensed technology to build most of the title.

"We licensed the Epic tech," he says. "I was the designer, producer and lead programmer of that game, which was a really fun two years, as you might imagine, and I was still teaching at the time."