Tim Sweeney is, without a doubt, one of the most successful video game developers of all time. And it’s astounding to think that what he and Epic Games accomplished in less than a decade with Fortnite absolutely eclipses his entire career’s worth of breakthroughs and achievements, since he started Epic Games in 1989.
In yesterday’s Unreal Fest Seattle 2024, Sweeney gave some bold opening remarks on what he thinks Fortnite represents for the video game industry, and his ambitions for what Epic is planning to do in the next decade.
We’ll be summarizing Tim’s brief talk here, but you can watch the entire Unreal Fest Seattle 2024 broadcast on YouTube as well. Tim starts off strong with this statement:
“Fortnite hit 100 million monthly active users last holiday – an all-time peak – and this is all happening in the context of a game business that’s rapidly changing in a way that we’ve only seen a few times in our lifetime.
As game developers, it’s a generational change.”
Tim goes on to claim that games like Fortnite are seeing unprecedented success, whereas big blockbuster titles like Final Fantasy XVI and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, are ‘failing to meet expectations’ because the trend in the industry is playing games with friends. He believes this is a manifestation of Metcalfe’s law.
In his words, it’s “the idea that the value of a network, or game, or social experience, grows in proportion to the number of friends you can connect to.”
Tim then describes what Epic has done with Fortnite as a ‘metaverse,’ and this version of the metaverse is definitely different from what Facebook’s owners are trying to make, but he thinks it’s the future of gaming.
So let me share here what he thinks that metaverse is in Fortnite:
“But, you know, when you look at what’s happening in the world of Fortnite, it’s new and it’s exciting and it’s something that’s never happened at this scale in the history of entertainment. With an all-original story that is evolving with original content, and also all the world’s brands participating, dropping in with musicians reaching users, Disney and Star Wars and others all coming together to create a world-class entertainment experience that’s ever evolving and live.”
We can originally imagine that some of you reading this are actually getting nauseous thinking about this, but you’ll need to hold that thought, because there’s more. Tim then says this:
“And Epic’s primary goal for this decade is to help all developers achieve what we’ve achieved. Our strategy for doing this over time is to share everything we’ve built with you, so that you can do these same things.”
And yes, Tim gets into more detail on how Epic will teach other game developers to build their own Fortnite style metaverses. Epic is still working to get more people using Unreal Engine, not just in video games but also in other fields. They are also enabling game development outside Unreal 5, with the Fortnite editor. That editor will be improved to give access to erudite technical details, such as programming APIs and verse scripting language.
Epic then plans to bring those two branches of game development together, with the aim of creating “new foundations for gameplay programming that are easier and also way more scalable.” Tim also talks about working with Metaverse Standards Forum and Kronos Group to build standards so that any developer can use their tools to make any game they want, at any scale, and deploy it on any platform they want.
Of course, Unreal Engine would not have gotten where it is today, if Tim and the people at Epic weren’t working at this level of ambition. If they don’t quite get to this original objective, we are fairly certain they will still hit a certain level of success that will change the industry once again.
But we imagine you’re all thinking the same thing. Not everyone who plays games actually plays Fortnite, and we’re sure some of you got tired of Fortnite and stopped playing it a long time ago. Tim may not like to think about how Fortnite, for how many boundaries it has crossed and its breakout success, it has also become a niche island unto itself.
While it’s heartwarming to hear Tim essentially say he wants to share the wealth, not everyone is going to be successful at making a Fortnite metaverse. We think a lot of developers are not even interested in this idea.
This industry is so much bigger than just the top ten games that sell every year, even if it feels that way when you read about it from analysts and the most rabid of hardcore gamers. If anything, the prospect of the entire industry chasing Fortnite’s metaverse will lead to unintended consequences.
But therein lies the rub for the industry. Because industry chasing isn’t necessarily bad for video games, it’s actually the fabric on which this industry has been built. But to find long term success, developers and game companies need to make the right choices on when to follow trends or try to make their own, when to be big on them, and when to pull out.
So Epic Games’ ambitions may be hit smack hard with a cold reality, or they may turn out to enable the next phase of the whole industry. It will be interesting to see how many companies go following Epic’s lead and end up sinking or swimming.
In any case, you can watch Tim’s speech and the rest of Unreal Fest Seattle 2024 below.
