Epic Games, developer of Unreal, has closed its Rockville, Maryland office and set up shop in Cary, North Carolina. It also simplified its name from Epic MegaGames to just Epic Games.
Mark Rein, vice president of Epic, explained the decision to move.
"Unreal was first created by developers who were scattered across the world," he said. "Eventually, the team came together to finish the game and that's when the real magic started. The move to North Carolina centralizes Epic, bringing all of the company's talented developers under one roof."
Development on Unreal had actually begun as a 'virtual company'--meaning Epic had programmers, level designers and artists working all over the country, and in fact the world, and sharing files and information via e-mail and FTP. It was only after everyone was brought together to the Maryland offices in the latter stages of development that the game began to take off, said Rein.
"By industry standards, Unreal was a huge hit for us and Unreal Tournament is turning into a great product. We fully expect our future work--developed by a complete team working together in one place from beginning to end--will more than exceed expectations."
Rein also told IGN why Epic moved from Maryland to North Carolina.
"Great weather, decent cost of living, availability of good services for companies like ours, home of three major universities, right beside Research Triangle Park--one of the biggest research pockets in the USA, decent airport, close to the mountains and to the ocean, an excellent variety of available apartments and homes in all price ranges," he said. "There are three other game companies that we know of in this area: Southpeak Interactive, Redstorm Entertainment and Interactive Magic."
Along with the move, Epic decided to get rid of its internal public relations group and outsource those activities to Technology Solutions, the company that represents, among others, the Gathering of Developers and until recently, Ion Storm. Epic has also given up its direct sales operation--a leftover from the days when Epic was primarily a shareware company. A professional fulfillment company will now fill orders received on Epic's behalf.
"We've decided to concentrate strictly on game development and technology aspects of our business and farm out the things that don't directly relate to them," said Rein. "We decided to forego the direct sales operations (people answering phones and filling orders) and farm those activities out. We also decided to hire Technology Solutions, a large New York-based firm which represents some of the biggest companies in the gaming business, to handle our public relations."
As for the name change, Rein said it was simply a matter of convenience.
"We decided to change the name of the company from Epic MegaGames to Epic Games because people were simply calling us 'Epic' and we were already using the name Epic Games as our main URL (http://www.epicgames.com)," he said.
--IGN Staff
