Epic Games may seem like a big confident team, but on the inside they have the same fears that indie developers do; their games being cloned.

You might find it hard to imagine the guys behind Gears Of War being afraid of cloning, but according to Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, the devs still see themselves as an indie team.

Not only Tim Sweeney (an ex-indie developer), but other indie devs like John Romero and Markus Persson talked at the GDC 2012’s Back To The Garage panel about the problems that arise being an indie developer. Tim Sweeney said that the key to making AAA  games relies on making games from high-end tech, a ‘portable’ skill that can be used to make smaller games. Their games, he says, are something that ‘a Zynga couldn’t clone’. He said to make big games, too big to clone. So that if developers try to clone them, it would take so long that the opportunity window closes.

He said that after considerable success, it’s easy to ‘capitalize on what you already know’. Maintaining a small business myself, those words are more true than you can think. ‘But at Epic, we know when to zig and when to zag. We made Unreal on PC and then moved it to console because that’s where the sweet spot was.’ He continued with ‘we’re now making games on iPhone because that’s the platform of the moment’.

They may seem like vague words, but they are very informative for small devs. And to follow his advice doesn’t mean to work on the iPhone, but what you think will be big in the near future, perhaps the iPhone and iPad.

What’s your views on Sweeney’s words?

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