At the end of last year, Hideo Kojima earned his deserved award for his contribution. Now, another one is going to earn his credit: Tim Sweeney is going to receive the Game Developers Choice Lifetime Achievement Award!

Tim Sweeney earns Lifetime Achievement Award!

Tim Sweeney, the CEO and founder of Epic Games, and also the creator of the Unreal Engine, will be honored with Lifetime Achievement Award at the 17th Game Developers Choice Awards (GDC). In its announcement, GDC said that Sweeney’s first game, ZZT, made an “explosion of user-created worlds” that many games have followed soon. Thanks to the game’s built-in scripting capabilities, players themselves can create virtually new stories and worlds they like!

His company, Epic Games, enjoyed more success later in the ’90s with games like Tyrian, Epic Pinball, and Jazz Jackrabbit, but one true breakthrough must be the release of Unreal in 1998. This release pushed the company big time. Although Unreal was not a real hit, it paved the way for Unreal Engine, used in almost every game today. Now, it has evolved into Unreal Engine 4, and it is still the integral part of any game in the market. Unreal Engine 4 is even adapted in non-gaming industries such as automotive, aviation, architecture, VR/AR, etc.

With this award, Sweeney will take his place among other Lifetime Achievement Award holders such as Todd Howard, Sid Meyer (Civilization anyone?), John Carmack, and Peter Molyneux. The award will be given on March 1, during the GDC ceremony. The event will be livestreamed on Twitch, and will start at 6:30pm PT. This year, the host will be Double Fine Productions’ chief Tim Schafer!

Tim Sweeney: A deserved award

With this so much deserved award, Tim Sweeney finally receives the recognition for his contribution to the gaming industry (and other industries as well). Hopefully he can continue his work to give better engines to the developers!