During the 2017 Game Developer Choice Awards, Tim Sweeney will receive the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award.

For those unaware, Tim Sweeney is the founder of Epic Games and the main architect of the Unreal Engine. So if you've been playing games for the last couple of decades you have certainly felt the impact of his work.

Sweeney got his start as a founder of Epic Games back when it was called Epic MegaGames in 1992. After the company released ZZT, one of the earliest successful shareware games, Sweeney restructured the brand into Epic Games and began work on the Unreal Engine.

Many beloved games and applications have been created under Sweeney's hand including Jazz Jackrabbit, Epic Pinball, and Tyrian back in the 90's. Some of the most critically acclaimed games of the last few years have been made with Sweeney's Unreal Engine like BioShock, the Batman: Arkham series, and Epic Games' very own Gears of War.

Currently, Unreal Engine is begin adapted for a use outside of gaming and is being integrated into different fields including the automotive, aviation, architecture, VR/AR, complex data visualization and film sectors.

Lifetime Achievement Awards are decided by the Game Developers Choice Awards Advisory Committee which features influential leaders in the industry such as Mark Cerny (Cerny Games), Doug Lombardi (Valve), Angie Smets (Guerrilla Games), Amir Rao (Supergiant Games) and Jade Raymond (Electronic Arts).

Previous recipients of this award include: Todd Howard, Shigeru Miyamoto, Warren Spector, John Carmack, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Hideo Kojima, Sid Meier, Ken Kutaragi, Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk and Peter Molyneux. With such a wide roster of prolific game developers, it's certainly an honor to have Sweeney added to the list.

GDC 2017's awards ceremony will start at 6:30 PT on March 1st and will be livestreamed on Twitch.