Epic Games - Acquired  ## Metadata - Author: **Acquired** - Full Title: Epic Games - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/212946d0-546c-4d69-b531-88ffa77f2379 ## Highlights - Epic Mega Games Key takeaways: (* Tim's dad, Paul, took over distribution of the game when shareware was still big in the early 1990s., * Tim still sold the game through a shareware model until two thousand thirteen.) Transcript: Speaker 1 Or waving my hands around of things to pay attention to in the future. Here is started playing this game for free and pay later. And then thing too, being a, hey, this game is editable. Speaker 2 Ye? This is when he decides, hey, i probably need a different name for this business, besides potomac computer systems, and something that makes us sound like a really big company, like a big, important, you know, ye, like were, we're on the same level as, you know, id soft ware is just getting started around this ime, and they have a really cool name. Why don't we call it epic mega games? And of course, by we, i mean tim, as i just i he releases es t and it does pretty well. He doesn't make a ton of money, but he sells a few thousand copies. Incredibly, they would keep selling the game until two thousand thirteen. And what this is credible, we thought, i found it in the research. So tim's dad, paul, ended up taking over a distribution of the game. It was still just sold through this shareware model of, like, right to tim. Speaker 1 And when sharewear was really big in, like, i mean, i remember it from the early nineties, o guess, the mid nineties, where you'd go to like a ([Time 0:20:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/38d900ca-2a44-4436-a1fb-b3d40a473353)) - The Rise of Commander Keen Key takeaways: (* Tim saw a game called Commander Keen and decided to make a game with a female protagonist., * The game is doing well and has sold a few thousand copies.) Transcript: Speaker 2 Pretty cool, if you can get the discovery and distribution indeed, indeed, in process of pay and do all the other very expensive things involved. An, i feel like a mappl over here. Puddingoa, well, that's was lucky for tim. He had his dad to in process to payments, ie, open the cheques and package up the floppy disks in mailing envelopes and send him out. So z z t does pretty well. Laka said they sell a couple f thousand copies of this. Tim starts looking around, and one thing that he has always been really good at is observing what's going on in the market. Now, i mentioned id sofwere a minute ago, and folks who know their gaming history know that it was john carmack and d john romero, and would eventually endid end making doom, which we'll talk about in a minute. And quake, right? And quake, yes, after doom. But before doom, it had released a game called commander ken. And it was a two d scrolling game. It was a pretty big graphical leap forward versus telick, literally, text editor based games like a, z, c, t. And so tim saw commander keen out there, and he saidhum o k, that's interesting. I should do something like that. What's a twist i could put on it? Well, what if i do it with a female protagonist? ([Time 0:23:14](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3b15e109-9dbf-4d31-a2e6-690f87adc52b)) - The History of the Doom Game Key takeaways: (* Just is an amazing feat of computer science, predating graphic cards or anything that optimized to do this., * It was distributed via shareware, so when people downloaded it, it was a limited time offer., * Doom ended up having a few million copies that it both sells in and distributes via shareware.) Transcript: Speaker 1 Just amazing feats of computer science, cause this well predates graphic cards or anything that sort of optimized to do this. It's just like an unbelievable amount of trigonometry and math. And jon karma used all sorts of crazy programming tricks to make this work. Speaker 2 And so it comes out, and like, this becomes like the fortnight of its day. It was also distributed via shareware. Speaker 1 So when you say the fortnight of its day, tha, like, let's paint this clear. For this tiny, constrained market that was video games, it owned that market, but were nothing like the hundred plus billion dollar video game market of to day. No. Speaker 2 I mean, for reference, you know, a fortnight has a three hundred fifty million registered players at this time. Doom ends a having a few million copies that it both sells in and distributes viashere were in those in those first couple o years. Ultimately, i think it would get to ten or twenty million copies, but no video game had ever approached anything like those numbers before. So tim and epic and marka like, o k, cool. ([Time 0:28:32](https://share.snipd.com/snip/41706a1b-7c46-4bfd-b050-8f1d2427b90a)) - The Timing of Unreal Engine's Release Key takeaways: • The timing to create a game engine is perfect because before, you couldn't create a game engine, and after, you would be behind. • The bar for creating video games is constantly going up, and without a tooling system, you would quickly become locked out. Transcript: Speaker 1 Like that he was hiping this so much that they had demand for the unreal engine before unreal came out. Speaker 2 Yes. In fact, i believe some of the first games that were made by third parties on the unreal engine came out within, like, youdo, a few months or a year of unreal itself. Oow. Crazy. Yes, totally crazy. Soit turns out this was a really big idea, because these dynamics were not only not going to get easier in the industry, the dynamics of the bar, the technical bar to build video games, That bar was just going to keep going up and up and up and up, expedientially in tandem with moore's law. And so without a tooling system like this, you would quickly become completely locked out, no matter how good you were of being able to actually build a game. Speaker 1 One of the takeaways there is, like, the timing to create a game engine is so perfect, because before that, you couldn't really create a game engined. After that, you would be so woefully behind that you'd better be creating a game engine for like, a whole new paradime, because it would be foolish to start building a p c based game engine Five, ten years after tim did ye. Speaker 2 And it turned out, you know, almost, like, in a much bigger way than what tim saw when he tried to do start working on jill jungle, somebody who's a really, ([Time 0:32:19](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f2000da2-cad4-441e-9bbb-b8b8d8700dde)) - The Rise and Fall of Microsoft's Xbox Key takeaways: (* Microsoft entered the gaming industry with the launch of the Xbox in 2001., * This increased the size of the console market and the number of people who could buy games., * This also increased the number of people who could develop games for consoles.) Transcript: Speaker 2 Yes. And not only was it a small operation, it was a remote operation. So they didn't even all like, live in maryland together. They were communicating a via ito, early, early internet technologies here. So finally, after just about five years of working on this in nineteen ninety eight, unreal comes out, and along with the the official unveiling of the re unreal engine for game developers. And unreal itself is a big hit, but also games that are built on it, so games like desecs, which people might remember, use it. And then a few short years after all this comes out, there's a major change in the gaming industry, which is, after many years of talking about it, microsoft finally enters the picture with the launch of the x box in two thousand one. This does a whole bunch of stuff, a, you know, one, it inserts a huge ito of weight and marketing muscle behind gaming. Two, it massively expands the consule market because of that marketing weight behind it, which was previously just the original play station, an n n sixty four. ([Time 0:34:48](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3b8fe258-9d35-4022-b1a2-0b6738191af5)) - Epic Games Sells Stake to Tencent Key takeaways: (* Riot Games is pioneering the use of microtransactions in the United States., * Tencent had already done this with the ea, the ability to do microtransactions on their early games in China., * And as soon as Ryot started to succeed in it very early, they invested in Riot., * In twenty eleven, they bought the company., * Tim sees all this going on, and in twenty twelve he agrees to sell any equity in Epic Games to Tencent.) Transcript: Speaker 1 This is really interesting, because riot is pioneering this in the united states. Ten cent had already sort of done it with the e a, the ability to do micro transactions on on their early games in china, something that they were definitely ahead on. And as soon as ryot started to succeed in it very early. I think was pre twenty eleven, maybe maybe twenty ten. Speaker 2 A ten cent invested in riot once ten and saw riot succeeding with this model in the west. They first invested in riot, i think, in twenty ten, and then they bought the company in twenty eleven. So tim sees all this going on, and in he wants to move epic in the direction of becoming essentially the, you know, a w s plus stripe, enabling this future ntoren and independent creators and game developers. Speaker 1 And the current state of their business sort of, they had sold years of war, the full franchise, all the, i p, everything, to microso not quite yet. Speaker 2 O k, first, he starts talking to ten sent and agrees, in twenty twelve, for the first time ever, to sell any equity in epic games. He sells a forty per cent stake in epic to ten ([Time 0:52:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/211aa1ed-6580-46b4-8e41-69957a4859c1))