Zipper Community Day 2011 Recap

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Zipper Community Day 2011 Recap

Last week was big for everyone here at Zipper Interactive as we finally revealed details about SOCOM 4 and its extensive competitive multiplayer modes. To help us celebrate the occasion, we flew in a group of diehard SOCOM community members to our headquarters in Redmond, WA to try out SOCOM 4’s multiplayer firsthand, while also giving them the opportunity to grill us with their burning questions.

The day began with “The 18” — as the SOCOM community has since begun to call them – being led on a tour of the entire Zipper Interactive studio. They met artists and sound people, QA testers and producers, and even had the opportunity to say hello to our executive staff and our designers.

Community Day 2011 Panel

Following the tour was a brief presentation that included a look at one of SOCOM 4‘s never-before-seen single-player levels, Onslaught, which they were also able to play for themselves later on during the event. We also formally announced 3D support and the game’s official North American release date of April 19th!

Of course, what the community really came to get were the first details about the game’s multiplayer features, as well as some personal time on the controller. We had four maps to try out, including the classic map Abandoned that you can receive free for pre-ordering SOCOM 4 from GameStop, and two (of four) different modes for play, Suppression and the brand-new Last Defense. As an added bonus, we also let everyone get a taste of SOCOM 4’s “Classic” game-type which melds an old-school rule set (no respawn, no health regeneration, etc.) with all of our current maps and game mechanics.

Community Day 2011

At the end of our event, a number of SOCOM 4 development leaders sat down for a one-hour roundtable where the fans could ask them questions and provide feedback regarding what they just played. This was important to us not only because we wanted to be able to give something back to the community, but because their feedback is incredibly valuable in making SOCOM 4 everything it can be.

Want to try out SOCOM 4 for yourself? We recently announced that a beta is on its way with specially-marked copies of Killzone 3 (your first of many ways in). We’ll have more details on other ways to access the beta soon, but in the meantime, check out the official SOCOM 4 website for the latest info and don’t forget to download the February 11 episode of the official Zipper Interactive podcast, Zipline, when we sit down with Lead Designer Travis Steiner and Multiplayer Lead Designer Kevin Schmitt – it’ll be a good one!

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70 Comments

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  • pre order MLB 11 the show get SOCOM 4 beta accesss. Now that would be killing two birds with one stone.

  • Nice to hear from Roper – I stopped listening to the IGN podcast after he left. Don’t care about SOCOM 4 though – after how MAG and the last few SOCOMs turned out to be.

  • After buying Qore to get into the mag beta test group and having all the feedback ALL the betatesters gave ignored I will never take anything from zipper ever again, once I dropped mag off at EB games and got my 4 dollars back- (nice return) I purchased BFBad Company 2- still loving it, been into FPS for 15 years now.. mag is bottom rung. zipper have killed way to many games, Honestly if the blog dosen’t stop trying to hype this junk on we the people who know better we will no longer trust this blog.
    Seriously, mag is dead, grab a shovel.

  • tired of all the socom whiners… you guys sound like the guys I hear when they die on a socom game “omg the other guy shot me through a wall, he’s cheating!!!!” No, hes not cheating, you just got beat. It’s funny but it gets so sad after a while, seeing so many poor sports and people who really don’t know how to MAN UP and take responsibility, read my lips, IT’S JUST A GAME, STOP CRYING.

    The same thing applies here, stop over-reacting kids. I hope you’re kids because most of the socom population seems to act like kids. We get it, yes the old socom was nice and even I don’t like some things changed. But it’s not the end of the world, and just because the game moves faster, the camera isn’t EXACTLY the way YOU want it to be, and the grenade arc isn’t there for you (too bad, learn to throw without it, it’s not hard!!!), doesn’t mean that the game should change for YOU or that the game is “all bad now!!” Guess what, there ARE “socom VETS” as you guys like to call yourselves.. there are socom vets out there who DON’T spend their time whining about every little change that HAS happened with EVERY new socom game… REAL gamers can accept some changes without quitting the damn game……..

  • every socom has had CHANGES from the other ones: a health bar in socom2, a BIGGER health bar in socom3/CA, armor in Confrontation… more grenades/less grenades in your pocket, encumbrance, slightly slower/faster gamespeeds, sprint………….E V E R Y socom game has had some of these changes and I haven’t CRIED about ANY of them like so many “vets” do… WHY IS THAT? Because I and some others know that the CORE of the game is still there, and that’s what MAKES the game. Repeat after me kids: Teamwork. Competition. THAT is socom, and a REAL socom vet knows that, sorry, but it’s the truth and you all need to know it.

  • Yes I want some of the features back like you guys do, but I aint gonna cry and say “im not buying this game!” just because ALL the things I want in it arent there. I LOVE S O C O M (….teamwork+competition…keep saying it until you KNOW it), I play socom for those 2 things.. not because of a grenade arc or because of pistols….those things dont make the game what it IS.. The other details are just that, so please stop the crying, it’s SO old (it was fashionable in the combined assault days, but now, cmon;) and it’s not the end of the world like some of you make it out to be… seriously it’s sad. And if you think those details are what makes it or breaks it about socom, then you’re pretty clueless about what socom is really about, and you shouldn’t be playing.. just like those people who scream on the mic when they die. Get over it. And if you hate the changes so much that it’s not “socom” for YOU anymore… DONT BUY IT. Would be better off that way, already got enough immature people on the game itself who can’t handle the game so they choose to blame the game or the other player for cheating them when they die lol…

  • here’s my thing: you CANNOT seriously call yourself a REAL GAMER if you’re a crybaby/poor sport/cant handle the game when you lose / when it doesn’t go your way. Choose one, gamer or whiner? I’m a real gamer, YES I can and DO give developers constructive criticism on how I think they can make the game better, but I’ll be on socom 4 with the other people that play Socom for the teamwork+intense competition of the game that no other game has and that I KNOW socom4 will still have. ;) …Take it from one of the few people who has actually taken a whole TEAM of EIGHT out by himself in a round of socom small maps…(in all my years of socom I haven’t seen anyone else do this…) and has killed 10 people in a big map… and I have my stats if anyone doesn’t believe or cares to play with me.. but the point isn’t to showoff how good I am, my point is to say THIS: Socom 4 is still socom to this socom PRO, let someone with some REAL credentials and good sportsmanship tell you when “socom is dead”. Peace~

  • Gee,I still have the headset that came in the Box with socom
    the day it came out.I didnt even know what internet was really back then..lol….How many of those Big time fans you flew up there can say that.

  • hahaha, i still have the socom headset as well. i dont use it though, i switched to wireless, but i do have the original one…

    i think this socom4 will be good. every game changes, u cant be stuck in the past thinking only about socom2 being the best. i remember people complained when socom2 came out to bring back socom1…all games evolve and things in games change…

    confrontation was mostly broken, they eventually fixed it, but still has socom roots which is great team-play and squad based gaming…still you have to be tactical, patient and rely on your team to win the match…running around lone wolf wont do you any good…

    socom4 will have the classic game mode for people who dont like spawning, why complain if theres an option to turn on spawning….its just an option that you can turn off…i thought thats what everyone wants, more features and choices…

  • to bad its not for psp but it still looks awsome!

  • hey Zipper are you guys supporting NGP or Slant Six will be doing a MAG / Socom NGP game ?

  • to bad its not for psp.but it still looks awsome!

  • Slant Six working on a multiplatform game ? ps3/xbox ? i thought they were first party , oh well

  • Roper?? Really, dude? I guess I’ve been livin under a rock. I didn’t know you were workin for Sony. Shoot, dude. Good to hear you’re back on board. Ain’t the same without your video reviews and all that, but it looks like this is where you been hidin all these years. Good to hear, man. Lookin forward to hearin more from ya in the future. Now I just gotta figure out where Haynes took off too.

  • @oo7PorscheMGS

    Stop your crying, you sound like a rambling 8 year old getting picked on at school. There’s nothing worse than people like you who cry about everyone else.

  • I ain’t cryin I’m just telling you how I see it. Accept it, or keep cryin to zipper to change socom every time they release a new one lol. Get over it kids. Like I said..you guys sound like the whiney kids I hear on the mic complaining about everything when they get owned…… Yawn.

  • Wow, the first thing you do is go back to crying about some kids crying.

  • Why the call to remove voice commands?

    Why the redesign? its not that i dont have fait in zipper, i love mag and a a huge socom fan.

    But was just interested in why zipper felt the need to redesign the game.

    If you look in the socom forums and the playstation.com forums and youtube forums all socom fans wanted was classic socom with new maps, single player, better framerate, HD, sixaxis and move control welcomed, maybe hand signals for commands with the camera.. and that’s it..

    I would like to state that while sony was trying to get killzone 2 out the door (a great game by the way) looking for that killer online game to compete with and put the ps3 on the map. it did not notice that the online game of the playstation brand that represented the playstation gamer was and always will be socom.

    I think the heat that sony and zipper are getting for socom 4 was the odd move to allow slant6 to work on confrontation. everyone would be hyped for socom 4 more so had slant6 not been allowed to do such a horrible job. Made no sense to me why sony and zipper would allow anyone else to touch the franchise.

    yet we cant get santa monica to do heavenly sword 2.

  • Please give us hardcore fans Socom 2 HD

  • interesting i have played every socom that has came on the ps2 and ps3. i have bought that crappy confrontation twice, that update 1.04 never worked by the way! i bought sony’s stupid network adapter, hard drive, headsets, controller’s, map packs i’ve been playing and buying the same maps since socom 2, cold front map pack, and never once publicly bashed zipper nor sony. now we may soon have to pay to play, buy kill zone 3 to play socom 4 beta? i’m not made of money! i just want a good socom 1/2 game!!! why it so hard for you to see that or is this how you treat your hardcore fans.

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