Epic Games

Type	Private
Founded	Rockville, Maryland (1991)
Headquarters	Cary, North Carolina
Key people	Tim Sweeney, Founder/CEO Mark Rein, Founder/Vice President Mike Capps, President Jay Wilbur, Vice President Cliff Bleszinski, Design Director Steve Polge, Lead Programmer
Industry	Video games
Products	Games ZZT Jill of the Jungle Jazz Jackrabbit Epic Pinball One Must Fall: 2097 Unreal series Gears of War series Shadow Complex and others. Game Engines Unreal Engine
Employees	75 [1]
Website	http://www.epicgames.com/

Epic Games, also known as Epic and formerly Epic MegaGames, is an American video game development company based in Cary, North Carolina. Its most recent success has been the Gears of War series of games, although it is also known for its Unreal Engine technology.

[edit] History

Epic Games was initially founded under the name of 'Potomac Computer Systems' in 1991 by Tim Sweeney in Rockville, Maryland, releasing its flagship product, ZZT, the same year. During the latter portion of ZZT's life span, the company became known as Epic MegaGames and subsequently released numerous popular shareware games, including Epic Pinball, Jill of the Jungle, Jazz Jackrabbit and One Must Fall: 2097. During this time, Epic also published and sold games developed by other developers such as those by Safari Software and also XLand's Robbo, Heartlight, and Electro Man; and Renaissance's Zone 66. In 1997 Safari Software was acquired in whole by Epic and some of their titles as well as other pre-1998 games are sold under the Epic Classics brand. Epic also released a hit platformer game in 1993 titled Xargon, created by Allen Pilgrim.

In 1998, Epic MegaGames released Unreal, a 3D first-person shooter, which expanded into a series of Unreal games. The company also began to license the core technology, the Unreal engine, to other game developers. In 1999, the company changed its name to Epic Games and moved its offices, including its Rockville headquarters, to Cary, North Carolina. In 2006, Epic released the Xbox 360 and PC bestseller Gears of War and completed work on Unreal Tournament 3 for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360. A port of Gears of War for Mac OS X is also in the works.^[2]. On August 20 2007 they acquired a majority shareholding in Polish developer People Can Fly^[3].

Key developers at Epic Games include lead programmer Tim Sweeney, game designer Cliff Bleszinski, Erik de Neve, and Steve Polge. In 2003, Jerry O'Flaherty was named Studio Art Director.

On May 20, 2008 Epic Games acquired Chair Entertainment^[4], and on November 7, 2008, Epic Games released Gears of War 2.

In association with Chair Entertainment, Epic released Shadow Complex on the Xbox Live Arcade, for 1200 points, or USD$15.

Mike Capps recently announced that Epic are opening a new office in Tokyo. The studio would be used for engine support, technology and soon game development.

The original logo for Epic Games

[edit] Awards

Due to the success of Gears of War, the studio was awarded IGN's "Best Developer for Xbox 360", Official Xbox Magazine's "Best Developer of the Year" and "Best Studio of the Year",^{[citation needed]} and Spike TV's "Best Studio".^[5]

[edit] Game engines

Epic is the proprietor of three successful game engines in the video game industry. Each Unreal Engine has a complete feature set of graphical rendering, sound processing, and physics that can be widely adapted to fit the specific needs of a game developer that does not want to code its own engine from scratch. The three engines Epic has created are the Unreal Engine, Unreal Engine 2 (including its 2.5 & 2.X releases), and Unreal Engine 3, Epic's latest release. Unreal Engine 3 has become by far the most commercially used engine of the three. It has been used in games such as Batman: Arkham Asylum, Mirror's Edge, Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Conspiracy, Huxley, BioShock, Mass Effect, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, Tom Clancy's EndWar, Lost Odyssey, Turok, Unreal Tournament 3, Medal of Honor: Airborne, Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, Army of Two, The Last Remnant, Gears of War and Gears of War 2.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Epic Games official site
• Epic Games Unreal Engine site
• Epic Games Unreal Developer Network site
• Epic Games Inc. on MobyGames