Epic Games, Inc. is an American video game and software developer and publisher based in Cary, North Carolina. The company was founded by Tim Sweeney as Potomac Computer Systems in 1991, originally located in his parents' house in Potomac, Maryland. Following his first commercial video game release, ZZT (1991), the company became Epic MegaGames, Inc. in early 1992 and brought on Mark Rein, who is the company's vice president to date. Moving their headquarters to Cary in 1999, the studio's name was simplified to Epic Games.
Cliff Bleszinski, popularly known as CliffyB, is an American video game designer, known for his work in the development of the Unreal and Gears of War series. After working at Epic Games from 1992 to 2012, he co-founded Boss Key Productions in 2014.
Jazz Jackrabbit is a series of platform games featuring the eponymous character, Jazz Jackrabbit, a green anthropomorphic hare, who fights with his nemesis, Devan Shell, in a science fiction parody of the fable, The Tortoise and the Hare. Created by Arjan Brussee and Cliff Bleszinski and developed by Epic Games, the series debuted on MS-DOS in 1994 with Jazz Jackrabbit. The series consists of two computer games and a 2002 Gameboy Advance game.
Gears of War is a 2006 third-person shooter video game, the first installment of the Gears of War series. It was developed by Epic Games and published by Microsoft Game Studios, initially as an exclusive title for the Xbox 360 in November 2006, before a Microsoft Windows version of the game, developed in conjunction with People Can Fly, was released in 2007. The game's main story, which can be played in single or co-operative play, focuses on a squad of troops who assist in completing a desperate, last-ditch attempt to end a war against a genocidal subterranean enemy, the Locust, and save the remaining human inhabitants of their planet Sera. The game's multiplayer mode allows up to eight players to control characters from one of the two factions in a variety of online game modes. Gameplay features players using cover and strategic fire in order to win battles.
Guerrilla B.V. is a Dutch first-party video game developer based in Amsterdam and part of PlayStation Studios. The company was founded as Lost Boys Games in January 2000 through the merger of three smaller development studios as a subsidiary of multimedia conglomerate company Lost Boys. Lost Boys Games became independent the following year and was acquired by Media Republic in 2003, renaming the studio to Guerrilla Games before being purchased by Sony Interactive Entertainment in 2005. As of June 2021, the company employs 360 people under the leadership of joint studio heads Angie Smets, Jan-Bart van Beek, and Michiel van der Leeuw. It is best known for the Killzone and Horizon game series.
Jazz Jackrabbit is a 1994 platform game developed and published by Epic MegaGames. It was released for MS-DOS-based computers, with subsequent Macintosh and Windows releases in 1995 and 1996. On November 30, 2017, the game was re-released on GOG.com along with Jazz Jackrabbit 2, with support for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Arjan Brussee is a Dutch video game programmer and entrepreneur, the main coder behind the first two Jazz Jackrabbit games, co-founder of Guerrilla Games and co-founder of Boss Key Productions. He is often credited with being the first successful Dutch game developer, sometimes mentioned as "the godfather of Dutch game development".
Bonita High School is a high school located in the city of La Verne, California in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. Opened in 1903, it was the first high school in the Bonita Unified School District. It moved to its current campus in 1959. The majority of its students come from Ramona Middle School, which is also located in La Verne. The Bearcat athletic teams compete in the Palomares League of the CIF Southern Section.
Gears of War 3 is a third-person shooter video game developed by Epic Games and published by Microsoft Studios for the Xbox 360. It is the third installment of the Gears of War series. Originally due for release on April 8, 2011, the game was delayed and eventually released on September 20, 2011. The story was written by science fiction author Karen Traviss.
Bulletstorm is a 2011 first-person shooter video game developed by People Can Fly and Epic Games and published by Electronic Arts (EA). The game is distinguished by its system of rewarding players with "skillpoints" for performing increasingly creative kills. Bulletstorm does not have any competitive multiplayer modes, preferring instead to include cooperative online play and score attack modes. Set in the 26th century, the game's story follows Grayson Hunt, a space pirate and former black ops soldier who gets shot down on a war-torn planet while trying to exact revenge on General Sarrano, his former commander who tricked him and his men into committing war crimes and assassinating innocents.
Fortnite: Save the World is a cooperative hybrid-third-person shooter tower defense survival video game developed and published by Epic Games. The game was released as a paid-for early access title for Microsoft Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on July 25, 2017, with plans for a full free-to-play release announced in late 2018. Epic eventually opted to move the game to pay-to-play in June 2020. The retail versions of the game were published by Gearbox Software, while online distribution of the PC versions is handled by Epic's launcher.
LawBreakers was a defunct first-person shooter video game developed by Boss Key Productions and published by Nexon. It was released worldwide on August 8, 2017 for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 4. Physical copies were distributed by Limited Run Games. LawBreakers attempted to expand on the traditional FPS approach by introducing low gravity gameplay and followed the character selection mechanics that are popular in other objective based FPS games.
Kevin Riepl is an American composer for video games, films and television shows. He is best known for his work on the Unreal series of games, Gears of War and Aliens: Colonial Marines.
Palace of Deceit is a video game written by Cliff Bleszinski in 1991 in his own company Game Syndicate Productions at the age of 16. The first edition subtitled The Secret of Castle Lockemoer was a text adventure for MS-DOS. On August 31, 1992, it was remade for Windows 3.x and subtitled The Dragon's Plight as a graphical point-and-click adventure game with an entirely new plot and graphics. Both games are played in a first-person perspective and have been released as freeware. Cliff's inspiration came from video games like Déjà Vu and Uninvited.
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is an online multiplayer battle royale game developed and published by PUBG Corporation, a subsidiary of Bluehole. The game is based on previous mods that were created by Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene for other games, inspired by the 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale, and expanded into a standalone game under Greene's creative direction. In the game, up to one hundred players parachute onto an island and scavenge for weapons and equipment to kill others while avoiding getting killed themselves. The available safe area of the game's map decreases in size over time, directing surviving players into tighter areas to force encounters. The last player or team standing wins the round.
A battle royale game is an online multiplayer video game genre that blends last-man-standing gameplay with the survival, exploration and scavenging elements of a survival game. Battle royale games involve dozens to hundreds of players, who start with minimal equipment and then must eliminate all other opponents while avoiding being trapped outside of a shrinking "safe area" or "safe zone", with the winner being the last player or team alive.
Fortnite Battle Royale is a free-to-play battle royale video game developed and published by Epic Games. It is a companion game to Fortnite: Save the World, a cooperative survival game with construction elements. It was initially released in early access on September 26, 2017, for Microsoft Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, followed by ports for iOS, Android, and Nintendo Switch the following year. Epic dropped the early access label for the game on June 29, 2020. Versions for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S were released as launch titles in late 2020.
Fortnite is an online video game developed by Epic Games and released in 2017. It is available in three distinct game mode versions that otherwise share the same general gameplay and game engine: Fortnite: Save the World, a cooperative hybrid-tower defense-shooter-survival game for up to four players to fight off zombie-like creatures and defend objects with traps and fortifications they can build; Fortnite Battle Royale, a free-to-play battle royale game in which up to 100 players fight to be the last person standing; and Fortnite Creative, in which players are given complete freedom to create worlds and battle arenas. Save the World and Battle Royale were released in 2017 as early access titles, while Creative was released on December 6, 2018. While the Save the World and Creative versions have been successful for Epic Games, Fortnite Battle Royale in particular became an overwhelming success and a cultural phenomenon, drawing more than 125 million players in less than a year, earning hundreds of millions of dollars per month. Fortnite as a whole generated $9 billion in gross revenue up until December 2019.
