Unreal Tournament's Free, Mod-Friendly Return is Great for the Fans and Epic
Unreal Tournament is coming back and Epic Games is looking for the community to help. Mike muses about what this means for the publisher and the players.
This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247. Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team.
From 1999 to 2008, a different type of shooter reigned supreme. Everything was coming up deathmatch, with that futuristic sci-fi surrounding fast-paced, high-flying fragging. If you were playing arena shooters, you were playing one of two titles: Epic Games' Unreal Tournament or id Software's Quake III Arena. That was the FPS divide of that era; Call of Duty and Battlefield were just the games that World War II fanatics played. And it stayed that way until Infinity Ward was able to take a chance on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, a game that went on to define the AAA shooter until this day.
After three main entries and two spin-offs, Unreal Tournament died with Unreal Tournament III: Black Edition in 2009. Quake III Arena was that franchise's only arena shooting entry; there were additions and ports like Quake III Team Arena and Quake Live, but no real sequel. If you wanted to shoot, you had to keep your feet on the ground, planted firmly in the real world.
Well shooter fans of that era, our long national nightmare is over.
The Real Deal Returns
Today, Epic Games announced the start of development on a new Unreal Tournament. Just "Unreal Tournament", not Unreal Tournament 4 or Unreal Tournament 2014. Epic has created a small team of developers to work on the core of Unreal Tournament and this team will be soliciting design feedback from the community during early development. Think of it as crowd-funding or Early Access where you don't have to pay a dime.
When Epic Games says development of the game begins today, they mean today. Unrealtournament.com now points to the Unreal Tournament page on the Unreal Engine 4 Wiki, there's some code available on the new UT GitHub, and a UT section has been added to the Unreal Engine 4 forums. Most of the design discussions for the game will happen on the forums. Alpha is expected to be up-and-running in a few months and the new Unreal Tournament is planned to PC, Mac, and Linux. But right now, Epic Games has little more than an idea and some marching orders.
"The cool thing for me is all the mods and content the community has created has always been a huge part of the success of Unreal Tournament," said project lead Steve Polge in the Twitch announcement stream. "We're just trying to bring that forward and basically get you guys in from the ground floor. We love Unreal Tournament and we've always been thinking about how to launch a new UT. We knew community involvement was an important part of it. When we launched those Unreal Engine 4 tools, we saw an opportunity to make it happen."
"We've been releasing our tools with all of the Unreal Tournament releases for so far and the community has always gotten involved and made a ton of content, whether it's new game modes, full mods, tons of new levels," added lead level designer David Spalinski. "We have a great community following and we want to make sure that we give them something to rally around for the future."
When it's finally done, the entire game will be free. Epic Games is side-stepping around the "free-to-play" moniker by stressing that the publisher won't be charging players for any content, but the game will still technically be what most consider "free-to-play" eventually. This is a small team at Epic Games and they're not going to be feeding the community a ton of content. Instead, they're making the base of the new Unreal Tournament - starting with simple deathmatch - while talking with the community about what they want to see. Everything else? That's going to come from us. From the community itself. That means levels, mods, weapons, skins, and more.
"We'll eventually create a marketplace where developers, modders, artists and gamers can give away, buy and sell mods and content," explains the company in announcement blog post. "Earnings from the marketplace will be split between the mod/content developer, and Epic. That's how we plan to pay for the game."
Let's Get Down to Business
Avid PC players may realize this is the Team Fortress 2 model. Valve made Team Fortress 2 completely free and allowed the community to create new weapons, headgear, and other visual customization items. Items are uploaded to Steam Workshop, where Valve ultimately decides if they're included in the game. Valve then splits any revenue made on each item with the creator; Valve makes money simply by providing a framework and making sure the items don't break the existing game.
With that information, the benefits of a new Unreal Tournament for Epic Games start to take shape. All of this stems from Epic's new strategy for Unreal Engine. At GDC 2014, Epic announced that Unreal Engine 4 would be available to everyone for $19 a month. That's the full engine and source code available to anyone for slightly more than the price of an MMO subscription. The new business model opens the engine up to more people, from hobbyists to established developers.
Unreal Tournament, at the lowest level, will stand as an Epic-built proof-of-concept. "This is what we and the community can do with the new Unreal Engine 4. Imagine what you can do with your multi-million dollar development team," they'll say in pitches to large publishers and developers. A concept video like Infiltrator or Elemental is one thing, but an actual game that can be downloaded and played is much better.
Above that level is Unreal Tournament's proposed Marketplace for player-created content. When Unreal Engine 4 was first announced, Epic revealed plans for a full Marketplace built right into the toolset. That Marketplace is currently live, but all assets, templates, games, and demos are currently free.
"We are building out this functionality. Right now everything on Marketplace is free, and we will release more free content soon," says the company in the Unreal Engine 4 FAQ. "Eventually all developers will be able to share and sell content through Marketplace. You will be able to distribute your own template games, content examples, plug-ins and more. We're excited about enabling everyone to make money by releasing assets, tools and code for UE4!"
Unreal Tournament's Marketplace will probably stand as an extension of the full UE4 store. And every transaction will make money for Epic Games, with only a cursory amount of effort. The publisher will reap the benefits from serious developers and certain hobbyists trading content back and forth.
The final major benefit of Unreal Tournament for Epic Games is drawing people in. Unreal Engine 4 itself will pull in people that want to make games, but what about those on the fringes? What about the modders or the simply curious?
If you want to help Epic Games with the development of Unreal Tournament, you need a forum account to participate. A forum account which doubles as your Unreal Engine 4 account; the same account which lets you edit the UE4 Wiki and ask questions in the AnswerHub. People who never would've signed up for the Unreal Engine 4 site are now creating their accounts, all to help Unreal Tournament become a real thing.
And once the game starts up in alpha, beta, and beyond, there will be people playing it. Those players will decide that they can make better maps, design new weapons, or create new mods. They'll want to bring back the old Unreal Tournament levels and skins they loved. They'll want to mod and change and tweak and really get in there. When they finally bite the bullet and decide to do something (unreal), they'll pony up the $19 a month for the full Unreal Engine 4 experience. Even if they only sub for a month, that's $19 in Epic Games' pocket.
Unreal Tournament is the gateway drug for Unreal Engine 4.
For the Fans, By the Fans
That's how it will benefit Epic Games, but what about players?
Content is king, folks, and no publisher or developer can create content as fast as we can. I played Unreal Tournament for years and there was a lot of crap content created, but eventually the cream rose to the top. Sites like Beyond Unreal and Planet Unreal cataloged everything that was being created, so players could just log on and find the best of the best. Now all cataloging will be handled in-house at Epic Games.
And the best creators will get paid now. Team Fortress 2 items make money for Valve, but they also provide respectable salaries and solid career paths for top creators. Team Fortress 2 Polycount Pack contest winners not only made between $39,000 and $47,000 when the pack became available to players, but many of them ended up in the industry. Shaylyn Hamm is an environment artist at Gearbox Software and Steven Skidmore works at Crytek USA for example. Disney Infinity developer Avalanche Software just hired Toy Box contest winner Crazy By Nick to work at the studio. Skyrim mod designer Alexander J. Velicky got a job at Bungie after the release of his epic Falskaar mod. A generation of industry veterans cut their teeth on Unreal Tournament mods and this is a chance for that to happen again. Even if they don't leave for the big leagues, paid creators are happy creators, who will hopefully make more content for the game.
While Unreal Tournament will be a community-driven title, Epic Games is smart enough not to leave the reins in the community's hands; there is a team of veterans leading up the project. Remember Steve Polge from the announcement video above? He was the lead programmer on the original Unreal Tournament. David Spalinski was a designer on UT3, Unreal Championship 2, and three Gears of War games. Senior programmer Joe Wilcox and art director Chris Perna have worked on UT2K3, UT2K4, and UT3. That a solid pedigree right out of the gate.
Fans will help with development, but you can already look at the official forums to see we don't all have a single driving vision like a real development team. We can't agree on what's the best Unreal Tournament (Unreal Tournament 2004), which weapons should be in the game (Shock Rifle, Flak Cannon, Bio-Rifle, Redeemer), or what modes define UT (CTF and Domination). We the community will benefit from someone who will eventually buckle down and make a final design decision.
When you get right down to it, the most important benefit to the community is the fact that we're getting Unreal Tournament. The seven year drought has ended. Yes, Titanfall brought back some of the high-flying fun, the Halo series has been a mod-lite replacement, Nadeo's Shootmania still exists, and there have been a number of open-sourced Unreal Tournament attempts, but this is the real deal. We have a chance to hear the original Unreal Tournament announcer again. To hold the mighty Flak Cannon and Redeemer. To die on Facing Worlds, Deck 16, and Morpheus one more time.
The promise is there folks. Now all Epic Games (and the community) has to do is not screw it up.
If you're confused about all the hoopla, Epic Games has discounted the Unreal Collection by 50 percent on Steam. Get on it.