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Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney to get Lifetime Achievement award at GDC 2017

Tim Sweeney

Tim Sweeney did a lot of cool stuff before joining Oculus. He founded Epic Games, made the ZZT scripting language, created the Unreal Engine – laying the groundwork for many games we play today – and he’s also responsible for the Unreal Tournament series. It all started with humble beginnings, coding away from home on the Apple II. 

Since we’re looking back, why not check out our list of the best old games

The outspoken proponent of open videogame platforms will be honoured at GDC this year with a Lifetime Achievement Award, taking place on March 1 at the San Francisco Moscone Center.

Sweeney’s Unreal Engine has been the backbone of a massive portion of modern games, including the Batman: Arkham series, Gears of War, Ark: Survival Evolved, Splinter Cell, Assassin’s Creed, BioShock, and plenty more. Though the engine has been improved over the years, Sweeney laid its foundations.

Previous winners of the GDC accolade include Todd Howard, Shigeru Miyamoto, Warren Spector, John Carmack, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Hideo Kojima, Sid Meier, Ken Kutaragi, Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk and Peter Molyneux, among others.

The GDC Awards Advisory Committee, made up of important industry folk such as Valve’s Doug Lombardi, Sony’s Mark Cerny, Angie Smets from Guerilla Games, EA’s Jade Raymond, and Amir Rao from Supergiant Games.

The ceremony will be livestreamed on the GDC’s official Twitch channel.