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Insider Describes the World of Sony's MAG

kotaku.com — MAG was shown to a focus group less than a month before E3. One among that group reached out to me, under a promise of anonymity, to describe what was shown and asked of the group. Put simply, MAG will be a mercenary combat MMO. It will more than likely carry SOCOM branding, as Zipper Interactive is behind it.

Who dugg this? Made popular Jul 21, 2008

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  • inactive, on 07/20/2008, -3/+31This is why I tell my company that those overpaid losers in focus groups don't work, just get a random sample of all your employees it'll produce the same result. Plus they love to leak info to feel important. This ticks me off, trust is a very big part of this and you even sign NDAs. I wish someone would rat this loser out.
  • NipGrip, on 07/21/2008, -3/+16Oh wow! You're right, man, if the developers only knew how netcode works and such as well as you did, they could save their time and not even make the game.
  • cleanme, on 07/20/2008, -3/+16Despite the NDA screw-up this game could either be absolutely amazing or a big clusterfudge with 256 people calling "I need backup" and everyone doing their own thing.
  • inactive, on 07/21/2008, -10/+22This is a game that can seriously only be handled by the PC or PS3 definately looking forward to this and it should be very decent. Warhawk has no problems with lag i m sure they will find a way not to make it a lag fest but the game itself better be less glitchy and a lot more fun to play than BF2. This game has so much potential.
  • inactive, on 07/21/2008, -0/+10Medic!
  • jermm, on 07/21/2008, -0/+8It might work, if the netcode can "ignore" events that don't directly impact the player, and not send them information about the battle which doesn't effect them. This would require a powerful dedicated sever though.
  • NathanCH, on 07/21/2008, -3/+10I'm kind of happy it's third person. I hope it's much like warhawk except on a larger scale. That would be very cool
  • jkoski, on 07/21/2008, -0/+7Slant Six is only doing Confrontation (which is not the next 'version' release). Zipper is still the developer of 'Socom 4'.
  • MMilitia, on 07/21/2008, -0/+7They'll probably give incentives to players that work as a team (similarly to Battlefield 2 with medic points/ammo giving points etc.).
  • kingmanic, on 07/21/2008, -1/+8Zipper is a Sony internal studio. It's not coming to the 360 or Wii for the same reason fable isn't coming to the PS3 or wii.
  • ConfusedCartman, on 07/21/2008, -1/+7I heard it is just a placeholder to mask the IP.

    They did a good job with that. *facepalm*
  • Shogi, on 07/21/2008, -6/+11And the best name they could come up with was "Massive Action Game"?
  • MrTankJump, on 07/21/2008, -0/+5What I see happening is the commander being able to set individuals' objectives that will show up on the hud, and they will only get points for that. Like a kill squad, where the general will select a squad and point out visible enemies, then they will appear as objectives to that squad, and only those kills will give xp points to them. There could be tons of different possible objectives, even obscure ones like spotters.
  • wedges, on 07/21/2008, -1/+4you probably won't be able to talk to everyone on your team, more like the smaller subset of your squadmates. i think this could be great. Warhawk was a blast with 32 players. bigger map, more players? i'm in. just please don't call it "Massive Action Game"
  • santasing, on 07/21/2008, -1/+4Yea, even Resistance 2 is soing the same thing.
  • Dracusis, on 07/22/2008, -0/+3What a tool, plenty of MMOs deal with several thousands of players at once in the same zone. You won't ~see~ them all at once, but you just like a modern well optimised 3D renderer, you'll only need to transmit data of visible players.

    That and the larger PS3 games like this (ie, warhawk) do have dedicated servers, unlike the xbox's paid for multiplayer service of which the developers get nothing to help with any server costs.
  • TheWilder, on 07/21/2008, -4/+7A buddy had an idea for a game that sounded just like this. A modern-day MMO, large scale, squad-based gameplay with rankings and differentiated commander options.

    If they really can pull this off without making it a huge *****, then it'll be huge no matter what kind of branding they put on it.
  • wedges, on 07/21/2008, -10/+13ummm.... you know that KZ2 has been shown in playable form, and looks a lot closer to the CG than anyone thought, right? or were you too busy watching videos of Gears of Repetition 2?
  • Cheeselover, on 07/21/2008, -0/+3Zipper did great things with the Socom name. Socom 2 was to this day I think, one of the best online games for the PS2 (Probably PS3 as well). Socom 3 was a step in the right direction but they made some changes that S2 fans weren't in favor of. Hopefully they have learned their lesson
  • dynamik, on 07/22/2008, -0/+3I'm not sure why you guys are digging him down. He made a valid point. Lets say that each person only uses 5kbps of bandwidth. That'll be 1.25mbps for 256 players. 5kbps is dial-up speed. 64kbps seems to be a minimum for acceptable performance (with 92 or 128 being recommended). That brings the total up to 16mbps. Now we're clearly beyond most broadband connections.

    This is going to be inaccessible to many people, laggy for many people, or they're going to split up the battles somehow. If they do the latter, what's the point of saying 256 players if skirmishes are actually limited to 8v8, 12v12, etc.
  • wolferz, on 07/21/2008, -1/+4Ok I think this has huge potential, and it's something I have been wanting to see for a while.

    First, I'm not a game developer nor do I have any object oriented or graphical programing experience. I've have an understanding and experience with basic programing concepts, but that is about it. So understand I'm not claiming to be correct or even knowledgeable... just opinionated.

    Second, for those that don't know, I HATE the entire Battlefield franchise and by extension I **HATE** EA [more than I did before BF]. To clarify: I think the methodology and concepts behind BF2 and BF2142 are ***** awesome and worthy of worship... but the games are so buggy that they constantly vacillate between unplayable and unenjoyable. I blame EA for this... as knowing their practice of rushing unfinished games out the door and then abandoning support for them as early as possible it seems likely that they would be to blame.

    I would love to see a massive combat game with hundreds of combatants on the field at once for several reasons. In and of itself this would be awesome. It could also open the door for massive-combat fantasy and MMORPG games. Yeh WoW and such has their battle grounds, but any one that has been part of a large raid on a cap city in WoW knows how that works out. Think about a Robocop MMO. You couldn't pull it off without having FPS-style combat... not unless you were ok with it sucking. And SWG's biggest drawback to me, pre-CU at least, was that blasters were still RPGified.

    To those saying the graphics have to be lower quality or the game would be unplayable, I disagree. Each client would not need to track all other players all the time, only the server would. The clients would only need to track others in their squad (and then only their stats unless they were in visual range), as well as opponents (but not necessarily their stats), vehicles, and projectiles. Physics and statistics calculations (hp lost/ammo used) could be done server side... leaving clients to handle input from the player and display of the servers opinion of what is happening. Obviously this would re-introduce the issue of lag shooting, but it would be better than the alternative, and I'm sure some one with some ingenuity could get around that.

    As for the server issue, I think they will have no choice but to run their own server or at best, allow approved servers run by companies donating hardware in return for advertising. The servers would need to be quite powerful... or even multi-server clusters similar to what WoW uses for each of their realms. Obviously hosting a private game with 200+ players would be impossible with even the highest end gaming computers, and yes even the PS3 (which I might add is now falling behind desktop computers in raw processing power, albeit at different price points). Servers would track players and physics and report pertinent info each client on a client by client basis to keep overhead and client processing needs down... similar to the way current MMO's work. The only physics the client would NEED to worry with is collision detection with static world objects. Let avatars walk through each other for the half a second it takes the server to tell the clients that didn't happen... it's not like it should be happening that often any way, Let players continue to move around for the half a second after they get blown up.

    Of course using such servers would likely take this into the realm of a game with a monthly fee... Something I would gladly pay if it was good enough.

    If you think outside the box instead of trying to shoehorn massive combat into the models used by existing 32-or-fewer-players combat games, it should be possible to achieve this. That said this is a pretty gutsy first attempt at something like this... so chances are they wont get it quite right... hopefully it won't be a total cluster ***** though. I will remain (atypically I might add) optimistic till I get a chance to play. I really want this to succeed.
  • NipGrip, on 07/21/2008, -1/+4Yes, because what Digg needs are more people that use internet cliche's like "teh fail" and people doing nothing buit ***** on things like you do. Matter of fact, the comments for this news item seem like a contest to see who can ***** on it the most.

    I *guarantee* had this been announced for the 360, fanboys would be cumming all over themselves trying to shove it down Sony's throats. But I suppose since it's a PS3 offering, we'll just ***** on it instead.

    Back to the original topic, please.. Stay away from Digg with your crap posts using "teh" or "fail" or "EPIC" even. Talk about being retarded with no imagination.
  • NipGrip, on 07/21/2008, -6/+8Wedges, the XBOT 360 fanboys are *realllly* going to digg you down for that Gears of Repetition comment. They haaaate when you make fun of that boring, boring game they herald so highly.
  • Lunarbunny, on 07/21/2008, -1/+3If Joint Operations is any indication half the team will be sniping from the hills and the other half will be driving vehicles willy-nilly, and good luck sheparding them into a cohesive strike group. Course JO never had a comprehensive command/squad system.
  • Lunarbunny, on 07/22/2008, -0/+2BF2 was relatively organized with its squad system. I say relatively because you'd still get Rambos in pick-up squads who wouldn't care if you were trying to take a flag; they'd just run off to try to steal the enemy attack helicopter. What it really worked for was keeping clanmates together, especially with the squad leader spawn.
  • wolferz, on 07/21/2008, -1/+2WoW... game is in early development and you think the screen shot there best offer?
  • JustinHopewell, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1The concept of this reminds me of one of my favorite half-life mods, Natural Selection, just on a much larger scale. I like the idea of a commander having an RTS view of the battlefield and dropping orders for the troops. By the time you rank up to that level, you should know the terrain pretty well, so I don't think that the argument brought up in the article regarding this would really be that big of an issue. I'd love to see more games forcing people to be cooperative to win, because its such a bummer playing with a bunch of dolts who go off and do their own thing without a care for the rest of the team. Natural Selection had its fair share of people like this, but for the most part, people listened to the commander, and having commander-set waypoints setup for you that you could see on your screen really drove in that cooperative feel.
  • NipGrip, on 07/21/2008, -3/+4You're still talking like a damned retard. Stop it!
  • wolferz, on 07/21/2008, -0/+1While I absolutely hate the battlefield series due to its plethora of bugs (such as making my otherwise rock solid stable computer randomly reboot under both XP and Vista, and of course the ability to shoot and throw grenades through certain walls) I have to agree that it perfected large-scale squad combat. If this game was to follow a specific model the battlefield games would be the model to go with.
  • FredFredrickson, on 07/21/2008, -7/+8Say what you will about how great 256 players at once is - I'll believe it when I see it, especially when CGI trailers are practically the only physical evidence that this game even exists.
  • anubis2night, on 07/21/2008, -2/+3This game has loads of potential. With the squad based game setup and the ability to rank up and use that experience to lead others it has potential, but really they need to make this a clan based game. You really want to make something like this a success and win over the live gaming community? Implement clan gaming and ranking into the game. With the ability to host up to 256 gamers you could start off with smaller teams then as your clan gets up in ranks you have to have larger games and progress onto the finals with full sized games. Now in the side gaming your clan would battle and practice with one another both in small and large sized games. Imagine having a few friends on the same team and practicing small sqaud / tactical movements then taking those maneuvers and applying them in larger practice modes then on league nights, trying it out on the enemies and seeing the results...
  • wolferz, on 07/21/2008, -0/+1If it is being set up ala-MMO games then the servers will likely be run by the company and/or donated by private firms looking to advertise. I agree there will likely be no option to make a private game... which wouldn't really even make sense for something on a huge scale like this.
  • dandonia, on 07/21/2008, -0/+1yeah I think they mentioned that they would break it down into sub teams of 8 - which is pretty cool
  • Dracusis, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1You mean your buddy and several million other games...

    Almost every game design/idea has already been thought of, but convincing someone to put money behind it is a rare thing indeed.
  • DraxusD, on 07/21/2008, -0/+1If the maps are large enough they could split them up and dedicate a server to each chunk, ala MMOs
  • AwesomeMonster, on 07/22/2008, -1/+2honestly. have you two looked at killzone 2? Other than being extremely good looking it is a by the books dime a dozen space marine first person shooter.
  • santasing, on 07/21/2008, -1/+2Behold.... Miss. Cleo.
  • Cimlite, on 07/22/2008, -1/+2I can't believe people are actually falling for Sonys second attempt at the whole "Killzone 2 / Motorstorm pre-rendered trailer" trick.

    Seriously... this game sounds amazing, but give us some gameplay footage or stfu plz.
  • WTFppl, on 07/21/2008, -0/+1"Massive Online Shooter", that sounds better to me!
  • ericrous, on 07/22/2008, -1/+2Sony is big on promises, not so hot on actual delivery ("Home" anyone?). This game will be an amazing accomplishment for consoles *IF* (and these are big if's) it is ever released AND delivers on the original promises (256 simultaneous players, voice chat, etc.). After I ran out and bought a PS3 based on promises of Home, only to still be waiting a year later with no release date in sight, I'm not going to be holding my breath though. God bless them if they can produce it. But until they do, it's just a vague promise.
  • Kanten, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1DOC COME ON MAN!
  • inactive, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1I was thinking this guy must be high as *****, guess I was right :P
  • Frylocke, on 07/21/2008, -1/+2That guy seriously described Battlefield 2, but with much , much larger maps.
  • WTFppl, on 07/21/2008, -2/+2Unfortunately, the Police and/or Federal Field Agents were only doing as ordered, which is part of their job description. If you really want to find who is responsible for giving the order of the raid, than you must find the person(s) who signed or vocalized the the "Go" for the operation. That would be the only person(s) that could answer to the courts or 'Internal Affairs'. Officers and Agents of the law have the right to back out of participation in a raid. However, that officer can be penalized for not giving proper notice to objecting to the operations unconstitutional conduct. Again however, most officers and agents want to keep their jobs, because they pay nicely and have a good retirement plans, which can easily be lost without following proper agency procedure and guidelines!
  • WTFppl, on 07/21/2008, -2/+2^^^^Some how [pot], that post was to be in a different news comment thread. My bad!^^^^
    -[I failed to delete before time was up.]-
    So I'm ready for the smack-down...
  • Fedaykin451, on 07/21/2008, -5/+5The only way battles won't turn into a "*****" is if people actually try to play by the rules and work together. Fat chance. Still, sounds like it could be fun if you find the right group.
  • greatblackowl, on 07/22/2008, -1/+1They should keep it like that to make it feel more campy and underground.

    It worked for Snakes on a... oh. Well, they might want to change it, then.
  • holzp, on 07/21/2008, -12/+12Sofar it sounds like Battlefield 2 with more players. Even the command system is the same. These concepts are almost four years old.
  • smhTheory, on 07/22/2008, -0/+0yes, stop announcing games altogether!
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