[programd]

I understand people having ideological issues about not wanting to deal with Epic, but don't let dogma stand in the way of experiencing some real innovation.

What I mean is that besides the free games, one big reason to install Epic is to play around with Unreal 4/5 game engine. There's some very impressive innovation going on in the game engine space, and whatever you may think of Epic the company, Epic the engineering organization is knocking it out of the park here.

From zero experience you can build a photorealistic open world game environment in about a week of watching Youtube tutorials and downloading free assets from the Unreal marketplace. Anybody who hangs out on HN should be able to pick it up very quickly. Frankly it's pretty amazing what you can do with Unreal in very little time. Unreal 5 (still early access) looks even more impressive in its capabilities - watch some Youtube videos about it.

I firmly believe that entertainment is heading in the direction of anybody being able to create their own worlds to play in, with multiplayer to host their friends no less. Unreal (and Unity) are the adult version of the tools kids are already using on Roblox and Minecraft and both engines are improving by leaps and bounds. Think of using those tools as the gateway to the non-Meta metaverse, where anybody can create and run their own huge, quirky, and amazing virtual world.