But you still can't eliminate all risk. Sweeney details one of Epic's early gambles with the Unreal Engine 3. The original design specifications for the PS3 indicated Sony planned on just adding more PS2 graphics processors into an array, effectively speeding up the PS2 but not taking advantage of multi-core processing like the Xbox 360 would. Sweeney didn't think Sony would follow through with the plan when Microsoft intended to set the processing bar so much higher, and guessed (rightly) that Sony would change their design to something more similar to the 360's. Had Sweeney guessed wrong, they'd have gone back to formula on the PS3 and would've missed its launch window by years.
Controlling the Future by Mastering the Present
When I ask Capps why Epic has been so successful - they currently have a multi-game deal with Midway, appear to be beating the tar out of other engine shops on current-gen consoles and are about to release the sequel to one of the best-selling games on the Xbox 360 - his answer is wry.
"We have three people here who practice the dark arts," he says, laughing, "and we've got a number of folks who are devout Christians. So we figure we're playing both red and black. I don't know. That is ... something we constantly fear fucking up. Independent studios have had a really hard time lately. ... One bad game is basically all it takes to kill most independent companies. We're lucky at this point that the engine is sort of that thing that keeps us going. ... We could have a really bad-selling game, and it would hurt, but we'd make it. We couldn't have two; that would kill us. But we could have one, which is nice to be in that position."
Sweeney believes it harkens back to the company's original, customer-centric days. "We started out in the early shareware business model. When you release your game and only make money if people like it enough to buy more, which is really very different from retail. With retail, you can make a pretty crappy game, and if you have it in a pretty enough box and you do enough marketing, you can actually make a profit. It wasn't like that for us at all. We'd only make money by building great games."
As for what's to come, Capps believes Epic's future is bright. "World domination has been Tim's plan for a long time. This seems like a weird path to take, I know," he says."We love where we are; we love wagging the dog. We're a little, tiny company, and we help architect consoles and what's going to be in them. We've been driving high-end graphics and processors for a long time. ... Intel calls us to see what we need three years from now.
"I wanna make Gears 2 and 3, 4, 5 if that's what we wanna do and we think it's gonna be fun, and keep making cutting-edge, mature, really cool games that our guys love to make, because that passion comes through."
Sweeney feels the same way. He believes their dominance in the current-gen console market means they'll be able to influence how the next version of DirectX will handle gaming-related applications, given how many developers make their games using Epic's technology. "I guess the best way to control the future is to have a say in how it will play out."
As I leave his office, I look back and Sweeney's hunched over a tiny laptop, peering into line after line of code and typing furiously. He's back in his factory and preparing his latest masterpiece for public consumption. Maybe this one will buy him an Aston Martin.
Joe Blancato is an Associate Editor at The Escapist. He remains unconvinced his motorcycle could take Tim Sweeney's Lamborghini off the line, but he's more than willing to try.
