For those who are unaware, ZZT was a text-mode DOS adventure game written in 1991 by the founder of Epic Games, Tim Sweeney.
It included a level editor and scripting language, which allowed anyone to unleash their creativity and design their own text-mode games using the ZZT engine.
This was absolutely unique at the time.
As a company, Epic is still hugely successful. Most gamers in 2020 have probably heard of Fortnite and Unreal Engine. According to Wikipedia, Tim Sweeney still owns over 50% of the company.
ZZT explored a lot of ideas about how to build a game creation system, which influenced Unreal Engine, which itself was hugely influential throughout the game industry.
The standard paradigms for today's game engines and editors was clearly influenced by ZZT.
It included a level editor and scripting language, which allowed anyone to unleash their creativity and design their own text-mode games using the ZZT engine.
This was absolutely unique at the time.
As a company, Epic is still hugely successful. Most gamers in 2020 have probably heard of Fortnite and Unreal Engine. According to Wikipedia, Tim Sweeney still owns over 50% of the company.
ZZT explored a lot of ideas about how to build a game creation system, which influenced Unreal Engine, which itself was hugely influential throughout the game industry.
The standard paradigms for today's game engines and editors was clearly influenced by ZZT.