Did
you live with your parents or did you have your own place?
TS: I
was in a college dorm for four years there, but I was still in the same town
with my parents -- I'd go back there on weekends. Mostly, I kept my computer
there and did most of my work from there.
Did
you ever finish your degree in mechanical engineering?
TS:
Not quite. Epic was growing rapidly, and
I was one credit short after four years. I didn't follow through and get the
degree.
Did your college studies in mechanical engineering have
any influence on your game engine design? Are the two related in any way?
TS:
I've always enjoyed building things, from go-karts to programs. And I wanted to
avoid undergraduate computer science studies -- the courses weren't challenging
because I knew most of it from my programming work. Mechanical engineering
seemed like a good alternative.
But
it was somewhat disappointing, as it takes far more effort to build an
interesting mechanical contraption than an equally interesting program.
However, the math courses were immensely useful. There are some things you just
don't know you need to know until you know them.
Where
is the University of Maryland?
TS:
College Park. It's close to Washington, D.C. My parents lived in Potomac,
Maryland. It's a rural-looking area
along the Potomac River.
So that's why you called your company "Potomac
Computer Systems" first.
TS:
Yeah, that's how I started out.
The
name sounds almost scientific. Why did you change to Epic MegaGames?
TS: I
started Potomac Computer Systems because I wanted to do computer consulting.
I'd gone through this succession of jobs: I had this job at a hardware store
that paid four dollars an hour --
basically minimum wage. That really sucked. It was really hard work, and
I didn't make much money.
I
started mowing lawns after that, and I found out that by getting a tractor and
going around and being entrepreneurial, I could make about 20 dollars an hour
mowing lawns. So I was thinking, "What can I do to make more than
this?"
I was
going to start a little computer consulting business where you create little
custom databases or things for people -- but that took a lot of work, actually,
and I didn't get anywhere with it. So I had all this business letterhead and
business cards with "Potomac Computer Systems," and by the time I
finished ZZT, I thought, "Oh, might as well just use this." I
hadn't really thought of it as a game company until after releasing ZZT.
After
ZZT came out, I was selling about three or four copies a day, which is a
hundred dollars a day. It was income you could live on, actually. I decided I
was going to try to do that full-time and make a living from it, so I started
working on Jill of the Jungle, this 2D side-scrolling game.
That
was early 1992, and at that point, Apogee had released a number of little 2D
games, and id Software had released Commander Keen. It was clear that
there was some real money to be made in that business. I was trying to grow PCS
into a real company, so at that point I realized that we needed a serious name,
so I came up with "Epic MegaGames" -- kind of a scam to make it look
like we were a big company.
Because
"Epic" sounds big, is that what it was?
TS:
"Epic ... Mega ... Games" -- yeah.
Of course, it was just one guy working from his parents' house.
Did you get the name from any specific place? Did you
think of other possible names first and pick one from that?
TS:
Yeah, I was thinking of a bunch of names. At that point I was kinda fixated on
competing with Apogee software, which later became 3D Realms. They were, by
far, the number one shareware publisher at that point -- very similar to Epic
in our business model.
I was trying to think of a name that would stand up well
against that name. I was thinking, "Apogee... Perigee... Epic." There
were a bunch of little ideas I came up with, but Epic seemed interesting for
the time.
Of
course, once the company became really successful after Unreal, I
figured we didn't need to pretend, so we dropped the "Mega" part.
It's kinda like growing up a little bit, I guess. Your name seems more serious that way, but
strangely enough, I still think of you as "Epic MegaGames."
TS:
That's funny. The "Mega" didn't stand the test of time. Now it seems
like a 1980s type of name. But "Epic" stands out well.
Yeah, "Epic" is a great name.
TS:
Of course, now there's a resurgence in the use of the word "epic"
associated with everything, and it's horribly overused, so that will probably
seem a little dumb in a few years.
Does the name ZZT stand for anything?
TS: No. At
that point, games were mainly distributed on bulletin board systems [BBSes] --
basically the precursor to the internet. I always wanted to run one myself, but
I figured if I had done that, I probably wouldn't have had any time to develop
games. So it was probably a good career move not to.
There
was this scam: everybody who released shareware would rearrange their name so
they would always be sorted to the top when people listed out the files available
for download.
So at that top of all the file lists, there was this huge clutter
of junk that you wanted to skip past. So I did the opposite and named ZZT so
it would appear at the bottom of all the lists. So ZZT was just a scheme
for that. It's also the cartoon sound effect.
In ZZT
itself, there are a couple references to ZZT with a dot after each
letter as if it were an acronym.
TS:
No, it wasn't an abbreviation for anything. Some people were trying to reinvent
what the name actually was. Somebody came up with "Zoo of Zero
Tolerance" -- but no, it wasn't really an abbreviation. I'd actually
thought of the name "ZZT" years before I created that game -- it just
seemed like the right name for it then.