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Epic CEO Tim Sweeney Talks Unreal Engine 4
Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games usually likes to stay in the background when it comes to his company, but in a recent interview with IGN, he decided to speak up and talk about the future of video games.
Sweeney is the man in charge over at Epic, but still likes to keep his hands dirty by spending most of his time programming. While most employees of Epic are working on current projects, Sweeney is looking four years into the future, making sure that the Unreal Engine is on the cutting edge.
In the interview, Sweeney talks about creating movie quality visuals in games in the near future. "I really see two major milestones coming up for games in the very long-term future. Number one is achieving movie quality graphics and movie quality pixels on the screen," he said.
The other milestone he goes on to discuss is character AI, and the simulations of humans in virtual worlds. He's not as optimistic about this milestone being achievable in the near future. In regard to the problems of humanizing virtual characters, Sweeney said, "They may not even be solved in my lifetime, but those are all problems that require understanding how the human brain works and trying to simulate that with varying degrees of accuracy. We've seen very, very little progress in these areas over the past few decades so it leaves me very skeptical about our prospects for breakthroughs in the immediate future."
It's interesting to hear about the future of the development engine that powers the majority of modern video games. Sweeney is clearly dedicated to keeping the Unreal Engine as far ahead of the curve as possible. It will be exciting to see what Unreal Engine 4 is able to accomplish, even if Sweeney says it won't be ready until 2014. For more of Sweeney's thoughts on the industry, read the full interview here.
[via Joystiq]
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