In a wide-ranging interview at Develop, company president Mike Capps reveals that the makers of Gears of War have five new projects underway and that he wants Unreal Engine 4 to hit on day one of the next new consoles.
Capps says the company wants to get better at having the tech used to make hit games like Batman: Arkham City and Mass Effect 2 available to anyone who wants to use it, including indie developers.
I would like to have a vertical solution — for our tech to be useful for mobile projects and triple-A projects. In the past few years I think we’ve learned a lot about our technology and how it works for indie studios. How our tech works for iPhone games, for high-end triple-A studios and for a couple of guys who make a cool UDK game over the summer.
He also says that they’re moving ahead with new game ideas, spearheaded by longtime employees that they want to groom into larger roles.
…the average person at Epic has been in the industry for 10 years. That’s the average, so we’ve got some really experienced developers working here. We’ve got guys who anywhere else they’d be the art director or the lead producer and they just didn’t have that opportunity with us. So, basically I’m going to give them a chance. We’re taking some really senior folks and say, well, it’s your project now, see how you do… It’s interesting, we have some people who are fierce lovers of Gears of War, and there are other people that think “ten years of Gears, please god let me do something else”. So that’s why I think people love it when they get the chance to work on Infinity Blade or BulletStorm.
And while Epic Games may be a major force as a developer of IP and game engine tech, Capps says they can have a hard time getting prospects to relocate to its North Carolina headquarters. The interview by Develop‘s Rob Crossley is a great read and offers lots of insight on the current and possible future state of the games industry.
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