25 Years Later: The History of Unreal and an Epic Dynasty
When you start a software company, you never know where it’s going to lead. For Tim Sweeney, who founded Potomac Computer Systems in his parents’ Maryland home, it led to a 3D engine that powers most of the world’s next-generation games, as well as TV hits including The Mandalorian. We trace the legacy of the Unreal Engine back to the game that spawned it 25 years ago.
Tim Sweeney was always a tinkerer. As a grade schooler, he took apart and reassembled the family lawnmower and built his own go-kart. After visiting his brother’s software start-up at the age of 11, the coding bug bit him, and Sweeney began developing his own games(Opens in a new window), none of which he shared with the world. That changed after he went to college, when Potomac Computer Systems released its first game, ZZT, in 1991.
Most new developers play it pretty safe with their first game, but ZZT showed what a singular maniac Sweeney was. On the surface, it’s a top-down action-adventure game that seems like a primitive take on the Legend of Zelda formula—battle monsters, collect treasures, solve puzzles. But the real hook is the built-in editor and scripting language, which allows ZZTto be used as a development kit for other games.
ZZTwas a solid success, earning Sweeney around $100 a day from shareware purchases. That was enough to convince him that he could make game development a career. Hiring a small team composed of contributors to a ZZT design competition, he moved the new business out of his parents’ house and renamed it Epic Megagames. The five-person team started work on their next title, Jill of the Jungle.
He linked up with Mark Rein, who had been brought into iD Software as a “probationary president” to handle the business side of that
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