So how are things shaping up at Epic at the moment?
Mark Rein: Yeah, things are really busy at the moment, we're doing a lot of work on Unreal Engine 3 and we've got Gears of War in development - and of course Unreal Tournament 2007, so we're working really hard.
We saw you were recruiting again recently?
Mark Rein: Yeah, we're constantly recruiting, but now and then you have to turn the volume up a bit to remind people, "Hey you talented people out there, we're looking for you." We've just created a new position which is lead engine programmer and we've never really had anyone in that position in the past, responsible for all the programming of the engine. As the engine team gets to a certain size, that management role gets more important and we got some very good applicants.
You mentioned those two key titles there. How's work going on them?
Mark Rein: Very well. Both games are a lot of fun. The beautiful thing with Unreal Tournament is the way we build it, it's gameplay first; by bringing up levels in a very unfinished state we're able to run around and navigate them and put in all the gameplay elements, then see how much fun they are before we go to the detailed step of decorating them and making everything beautiful. We have quite a few levels up and playable now. We're prototyping the new game types, we have some great new vehicles, we have some cool new weapons - that's how UT goes and it's going well. Come see us at E3 [winks].
And of course the other major title is Gears of War. How's work progressing with that title? We've been keeping a real close eye on that one.
Mark Rein: Cliffy B and the whole team is doing very well. The game is looking spectacular of course as everyone expects, but more importantly, we've got some really great AI now. We've recently been doing some multiplayer play tests and that's always fun, even if I'm getting my butt kicked as usual. Mark Rein equals target practice!
I think people are going to be pretty excited about Gears. We've tried very hard to let excitement ebb and flow naturally, without trying to over hype the game. What we want to do is not reveal a lot of details about the gameplay or the story because it's one of these intensive single-player driven stories. I think if you reveal too much about that you take away the mystery and the fun for the gamer. So we've shielded it to an extent and said, 'Here's a pretty screenshot, don't ask too many questions'.
A lot of games give away the story even sometimes in screenshots. We definitely don't want to be one of those games and I think people will be really surprised when they see some of the elements of the game that haven't been discussed or shown.
Weapons are one example. Because the game's generated so much excitement, based on how beautiful it looks and a couple of the trailers we've shown, we've been able to pretty much keep the weapons under wraps. Everybody's seen the three or four guns and some grenades and things that we've shown. We will gradually reveal more and more but the idea's not to reveal everything.
The multiplayer testing sounds intriguing though? We haven't heard too much about that before.
Mark Rein: Oh yeah, it's a lot of fun. The multiplayer has - well I don't want to pigeon hole it by saying it has a Counter-Strike feel to it - but imagine a more tactical Counter-Strike, where team work is absolutely essential, where cover is absolutely essential and it's just a lot of fun. We've had eight-player matches, they go on for a long time and everyone's really enjoying testing them out.
Of course you're now considered one of the premier next-gen engine developers in the world. How is work on Unreal Engine 3 developing?
Mark Rein: Our license program is going really well, but more importantly engine development is going extremely well. We've expanded the team recently and just added another tools developer. Tools are really the cornerstone of Unreal Engine 3 and we're now working on the multi-threaded renderer which is a vast performance improvement over where we've been in the past and an absolute necessity to take advantage of PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. We will probably have that in a very early showable form at GDC and we should deliver to licensees soon thereafter.
