Interview: Tim Sweeney and Saxs Persson on What’s Holding Back True Next-Gen Gaming
Tim Sweeney does not endorse what blockchain has brought to game development. Epic’s CEO is focused on technologies such as cryptocurrencies that he believes are influencing the technology needed to create truly innovative gaming experiences. Lament ‘generations’.
“There’s been a lot of neglect because everyone is leaving…the generation of computer scientists who traditionally pushed that set is gone,” Sweeney says. We are trying to fill the gaps in building a research team that is currently building, and I believe new genres of games will emerge from the technology that is in the pipeline that is being built right now.”
Saxs Persson, Epic’s executive in charge of the Fortnite ecosystem, agrees.
“I think it’s non-trivial because it’s not what you’re putting on the screen right now, but pretty much…all game engines are really…commercial game engines, and their architecture is what it’s meant to be. It’s been, I don’t know, 20, 30 years,” he says. “Nothing really has changed. It has to change. It has to change. Or it’s just trying to squeeze more blood out of that stone. Beyond what Battle Royale can really do.” Breaking in requires changing the basic programming model.”
The pair are fresh off Epic’s State of Unreal presentation last week, when the company unveiled Unreal Engine 5.2 and rolled out new creation tools and revenue sharing for Fortnite players.
Speaking with IGN during an interview at the Game Developers Conference [GDC]they talked about the possibility of Fortnite’s Unreal Editor [UEFN] The toolset is likened to the evolution of the modding scene, which has spawned many new genres over the years. They also considered the state of gaming technology in 2023. This is heavily driven by Epic’s Unreal Engine.
towards the future
Both, as is often the case, plan ahead, and Sweeney regularly brings up the metaverse concept. The term tends to offer a punchline in gaming circles, but it makes more sense when combined with Fortnite’s thriving ecosystem. The latest development aims to capitalize on popular sentiment that Epic’s battle royale is a true metaverse, but Persson is careful about calling it a “platform.”
“It’s not a technology platform. It’s a place where people go to entertain and we have to entertain them and we have to entertain more and more people. That’s the challenge. We need to make shooters How do we find a way out for people who don’t care? It’s about acceptance,” Persson says.
Epic recently announced a new revenue sharing plan that will split 40% of the game’s net revenues with creators. Payment is based on overall engagement with custom islands and other creations. This is a major change that seeks to push Fortnite beyond the boundaries of the battle royale genre.
But even as Epic looks to grow the Fortnite ecosystem, fans look back with growing nostalgia for the original Battle Royale. Once the UEFN tools were available, the player immediately scrambled to recreate his original Fortnite Battle Royale as it existed in his 2018. Topics about intellectual property. “
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“You can’t remake a Call of Duty map, and we were digging into what was going on with the Fortnite Chapter One map, and we decided this was really cool and it’s for Fortnite. I gave it permission because it was from, but I think the real innovation here has to be the original new work, right?” Sweeney said. “Because some of these things… nostalgia pieces are cool, but most of the time they’re going to be someone else’s work and you’re likely not to give permission. We’re really working on creating news genres and games and some really original stuff.”
Persson added that “nostalgia is often the first thing that comes to mind when you get a feature,” but Epic “want people to create their own.” [stories and characters].”
What they really want is something like what happened in Defense of the Ancients, better known as DOTA popularized in Warcraft 3’s map editor scene and PlayerUnknown’s Battleground. [PUBG]In fact, Sweeney says he recently ran into PUBG creator Brendan Greene at GDC.
The problem, Sweeney argues, is that map developers for platforms like Warcraft 3 couldn’t easily profit from what they created and ended up creating standalone games elsewhere. is. It’s a problem he claims Fortnite’s newly updated revenue sharing system solves.
“The tragic thing that happened there was that we had to leave our own ecosystem behind and build a new ecosystem in order to succeed at our own scale. It’s a mistake we don’t want to happen, to the point where if we want to grow Fortnite, provide financial opportunities for all creators, and build a truly successful game, we don’t have to build it as a standalone game in Unreal Engine,” Sweeney said. say. “Now you can do it. We’ll support it if you want it. We really want the best opportunity to stay in this as we build an open metaverse together.” .”
“Underestimate Opportunities”
Elsewhere, Sweeney has stated that he is interested in further advancements in proceduralism, calling its implications “genuinely brilliant”. He has also been impressed with the growth of his marketplace for content. This makes it easy for game developers to get common assets that save time. But there is still much to improve, he says.
“I think people are underestimating the opportunities for advancement in programming, language technology and programming stacks to improve the state of game development. Fortnite Battle Royale is 100 players. I can’t support more One server, one floor, on a machine,” Sweeney says. “We don’t have the technology to scale up to many cores or core data centers. No. I think there are a lot of core computer science levels, and improvements that can be made there.”
However, with the release of Unreal Engine 5.2, Sweeney hopes developers will “jump right in” to the new tools.
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“I started using Pipeline this month… It generally takes a lot longer to build a game of this caliber that uses this kind of tool… But people are starting to appreciate procedural systems, MetaHuman animators I think you can use features and more out of the box , and they’re all designed to get rid of existing flows that developers already use, increasing productivity and quality. “I think the big impact is that it just increases quality without increasing costs or development time,” says Sweeney.
Persson claims the developer has already contacted him about the technology’s potential.
“The first demo we did at the Rivian R1T demo… I know two separate indie developers in the audience texted them. One of them was like, ‘This is what we want. It’s a workflow that allows you to make games.. Take a bespoke area and turn it into a procedural assembly.
“And the second is a comment about MetaHuman, which was missing to unlock the last bit of how they create not just one NPC they can afford, but a variety of NPCs. “Many of these tools are built into existing workflows. They just make workflows more productive.”
It’s ultimately one of the biggest themes in the gaming industry right now. It’s about streamlining game development in a way that makes today’s increasingly ambitious projects more achievable. Otherwise, game development teams will be forced to keep scaling up in an unsustainable way.
In the meantime, AAA developers continue to work on unlocking the secrets of Unreal Engine 5. Several Unreal Engine 5 games are currently in development, and others are migrating to the technology, but have yet to reach mass adoption.
Games utilizing Epic’s technology include STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl and Ark 2, with more to come later this year. For now, Epic is using the new Fortnite ecosystem as a starting point to realize future dreams elsewhere.
Kat Bailey is IGN’s Senior News Editor and co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Any tips? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
