The man behind "Fortnite" – WSJ



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At the age of 30, the founder and CEO of Epic Games Inc., Tim Sweeney, already had two video games to his credit and was starting to make money.

"I had a Ferrari and a Lamborghini on the parking lot of my apartment," he recalls. "People who did not meet me thought I had to be a dealer."

Today, 48-year-old Sweeney is worth more than $ 7 billion, according to the Bloomberg billionaires index. Epic was valued for the last time at $ 15 billion, counting

Walt Disney
Co.

and Chinese Tencent Holdings PLC among its investors. And "Fortnite", its hit game, has collected 250 million players and an estimated turnover of $ 3.9 billion.

Mr. Sweeney is a technology giant, but he remains a little-known character.

"I'm single, I do not have children, so I live a fairly simple life," he said, in his spare time he programs or hikes. off the beaten path and find things that nobody, in my opinion, has seen before, "he said.

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Mr. Sweeney has long since abandoned his passion for luxury vehicles. He is now putting his money into nature conservation efforts. He has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to preserve more than 45,000 acres of North Carolina forest.

His favorite dish is Bojangles fried chicken. ("This establishes a perfect balance between tasty food and a commitment of time," he said). He drinks mainly Diet Coke ("but only because it is almost impossible to find Tab these days"). His office uniform is a t-shirt and cargo pants.

While America's largest video game companies are grouped together in Los Angeles, New York and the Bay Area, Epic is based in Cary, on the northeast, on the Raleigh Road. Mr. Sweeney stated that the location prevented Epic from being influenced by the Silicon Valley group.

Far from Silicon Valley, Epic Games is home to this office building located in Cary, NC.

Photo:

Jeremy M. Lange for the Wall Street Journal

The entrepreneur is adamant on one thing: he did not create "Fortnite"; his employees did. He did not design or program the game. But under the leadership of Mr. Sweeney, the megahit has transformed the global video game industry by $ 130 billion.

Before "Fortnite", the business was dominated by bankable franchises such as Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto, on which people were playing

Sony
Body

PlayStation

Microsoft
Body

Xbox or a computer for about $ 60 a pop. One person can play alone, or maybe with one or two friends with the same equipment. Game publishers have made periodic payments, such as Hollywood suites, to attract followers.

Epic tried something different. "Fortnite" is free and applies to all major devices used to play games – consoles, computers, smartphones and tablets. This gives its own turn to a new trendy genre called Battle Royale, where a large group of players argue until they have only one person or team. He has constantly changed the virtual world of the game to give players something new to discover. And he took the popular shooting format and made it less violent and more fun, with colorful characters that rival dance moves as well as guns.

The "Fortnite" artwork adorns the walls outside the offices of Epic Games employees.

Photo:

Jeremy M. Lange for the Wall Street Journal

Still, there was a problem. One of the most popular console players, Sony's PlayStation 4, can not play with another player on Microsoft's Xbox One.

So for six months last year, Mr. Sweeney called and e-mailed the leaders of the two tech giants, asking them to do what was unprecedented and previously unthinkable: to make their systems work together.

"An international diplomacy effort," Sweeney said. "Given the long-term rivalries, it was a series of controversial discussions."

Meanwhile, Mr. Sweeney worked to bring "Fortnite" to

Nintendo
Co.

Switch, which also serves as home console and portable gaming device. He also pushed the switch to support cross-play with his rivals.

Mr. Sweeney has only had one part of his wish. Nintendo and Microsoft have agreed in June 2018 but Sony is opposed. He then shared data with Sony showing that the cross-play between PCs and mobile phones, for example, had significantly strengthened the "Fortnite" commitment. He also turned to

Twitter
,

to fan fans' passion for this long-standing feature. Sony gave way last fall.

"This is one of the greatest moments in Epic's history," said Sweeney. "I was happy and tired."

By removing barriers between players with different devices, Epic effectively transformed "Fortnite" into a massive social network. Wearing headphones to talk to each other, groups of friends exchange jokes and gossip while fighting for their survival.

Malcolm, a character from the Unreal video game series, stands near the metal slide that connects two floors of the Epic Games headquarters.

Photo:

Jeremy M. Lange for the Wall Street Journal

It's "as much a social hangout for a lot of people as gambling," Mr. Sweeney said during a recent phone call, chirping birds in the background while He was walking in the woods behind his desk while chatting.

Epic's latest initiative, the agreement to acquire the video chat application Houseparty, announced Wednesday the creation of two online dating spaces for teenagers. Houseparty, formerly known as Life on Air Inc., allows small groups of friends to participate in a lounge style video conversation.

The people who worked with Mr. Sweeney describe him as being very smart and young. Lee Perry, a former Epic video game designer, remembers seeing Mr. Sweeney jump on a small trampoline in the office and rollerblade around the company's parking lot. "He's just a big kid," said Mr. Perry.

Mr. Sweeney works at an office in a six-person office with part of the executive team. "There are a number of similar" brain trust "offices in Epic that I visit often," he said. "We find that small groups like this are the best balance between individual work and group collaboration, compared to isolated offices or cubic farms."

Epic Games general manager Tim Sweeney recently said in his office that the "Fortnite" call said, "It's as much a social gathering place for a lot of people as a game."

Photo:

Jeremy M. Lange for the Wall Street Journal

Current and former colleagues say that Mr. Sweeney avoids the formalities. Chris Gerhardt, Epic's Chief Information Officer from 2014 to 2015, said that when he interviewed one of his employees, he gave important advice: "Whatever you do, do not wear a jacket and tie. . "

Being the CEO of Epic is the only real job of Mr. Sweeney. Growing up in Potomac, Maryland, with two older brothers, his father was a cartographer for the United States Government's Defense Mapping Agency and is now retired. Her mother, who died in 2007, was a housewife and a passionate gardener.

When Mr. Sweeney was 11 years old, one of his brothers bought him an Apple II Plus computer and he started programming. "From then on, I knew what I wanted to do," he said. "I spent more hours programming than I thought I had slept, stay in school or do anything else in the world."

Mr. Sweeney founded Epic in 1991 in his parents' basement at age 20 and financed it with $ 4,000 in personal savings. He later left the University of Maryland, a few credits in a mechanical engineering degree. "I went from lawn mowing to CEO of Epic," said Sweeney, who graduated in 2018.

In its infancy, the company has had some success with a handful of games, including "Unreal Tournament" and "Gears of War", which follow more classic shoot-'em-up formats.

Videogamers plays Epic's "Gears of War 2" on Xbox 360 at the 2008 E for All.

Photo:

Richard Vogel / Associated Press

"Fortnite" was born in 2011 from one of Epic's occasional "video games" where developers could experiment with ideas. With a subtitle entitled "Save the World", it cost $ 40 and was not particularly convincing because players did not compete directly.

Nobody expected it to be a success. "The initial plan was to go really small with that," said Sweeney. "Fortnite" sold only about one million units after its launch in July 2017, which does not comply with current blockbusters standards.

What followed was a series of decisions by Sweeney and his team that turned Fortnite into one of the most popular video games. Epic created a second version, or "mode", of the Battle Royale genre and made it free.

While many free games yield money by billing powdered weapons and superhero powers, Epic decided not to charge for things that would allow players to triumph over any one. # 39; other. Instead, Epic sold cosmetic accessories such as dance moves, in some cases for a short time, making them indispensable as a pair of Air Jordan sneakers in limited edition, but much less expensive.

Then Mr. Sweeney negotiated the agreements that broke the walls between the makers of video game consoles. "We felt that virtually everyone would play Fortnite with their friends if there was not a barrier to entry," he said.

"Fortnite" is a game to kill or to be killed. But his comic-free style (we can play banana) has been well received by the guardian parents of the portal, weary of hyperviolence in many games today. It was not necessarily a design decision but a result of Epic's evolution.

"We recently hosted a Halloween party for kids and we had more kids in Epic's office than Epic employees," said Sweeney. "It's a reflection of the growth and maturity of society and how different generations are mixing to think about the kinds of games we want to create for the world."

The daily replenishment of its virtual store by Epic and the weekly content updates also gave Fortnite another advantage. He could quickly incorporate the comments of the players and seize the sudden obsessions of pop culture, like a hip dance movement like The Floss.

"Every week we learn what works and what does not, and we are constantly evolving," said Sweeney.

All this fueled the "Fortnite" fever. Retention of the game on children has sounded the alarm, especially of those who think that games are addictive. Not to play "Fortnite" – or even to be talented – has become a new stigma for some children. Playing with the standard avatar outfit for everyone, initially, can be called "defect" or "noob", a modern mockery in the schoolyard.

Mr. Sweeney said that Epic strove to make "Fortnite" accessible to all. He rejects the dependency label, however. "It's unfortunate to say that having a lot of fun is something more sinister," Sweeney said. "You can often say the same thing about playing football or watching football."

Today, the dominance of "Fortnite" diminishes. Monthly earnings from the sale of virtual benefits such as costumes and dance moves for player avatars have dropped 56% since a record high of $ 372.2 million in December, according to Nielsen's SuperData. Epic does not disclose financial data.

In May, people spent 106 million hours watching others play "Fortnite" live

Amazon.com
Inc.

Twitch, data from Newzoo BV show. This corresponds to a peak of 149.3 million hours last July.

A "Fortnite" game competition earlier this year in Katowice, Poland, won hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Photo:

bartosz siedlik / AFP / Getty Images

With its competitors imitating "Fortnite" quickly, Epic goes beyond the basic experience of running. In February, 10.7 million players showed up for a live concert in the "Fortnite" world staged by the electronic musician Marshmello, without permission. Epic added a "creative" mode to "Fortnite", allowing players to build themselves without the threat of a hostile shot.

The company's latest venture is an online store launched in December that sells computer games, which it shares with Valve Corp.'s Steam, an influential giant in the PC gaming community. Epic plans to add games for Android devices later this year or next year.

"I think the thing I'm most proud of is not creating" Fortnite, "said Mr. Sweeney," because I did not create "Fortnite." But I created and maintained the company that built Fortnite.

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at [email protected]

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