SCEA director of development Seth Luisi (right) and his son Tazu

Coming off of the comic book-inspired stealth gaming bliss that was Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, we were initially unmoved by the relative austerity of the original SOCOM: U.S. Navy Seals. But after dabbling with the multiplayer ahead of the PlayStation 2 game's August 2002 release, we gave the single-player story mode another shot, and found ourselves drawn in by the terse voice command system the game employs to to let players give orders to their squadmates; the tense, die-and-restart-from-the-beginning mission structure that forced us to carefully pick our way through each level; the terrific feel of the varied weapons that composed SOCOM's modern day arsenal. Even after the third and fourth games' emphasis on vehicles over close-quarters combat dimmed our interest, our ears nevertheless perk up when news from the SOCOM universe. At an event last month in San Diego, we got to chatting with Seth Luisi, director of development for Sony Computer Entertainment America and a 13-year veteran of the company who's been in charge of the Zipper Interactive-developed SOCOM franchise since its inception. In our extensive Q&A, we discussed why SOCOM fans prefer the second installment of the four console games that were released to date; the series' forthcoming Playstation 3 debut, SOCOM: Confrontation; and how new developer Slant 6 came to be involved with the series.

For the most part, fans of the SOCOM franchise are pretty vocal about their preference for SOCOM II. What do you think it is about that game specifically that they love so much?

Well, SOCOM II had these really nice, intimate experiences where there's a little more density in the environment, a little more interaction, more strategies you can use and a more closed or confined environment. SOCOM 3, in adding vehicles, the environments obviously had to grow, so we lost a little of that. We tried to come back to that a little bit with SOCOM: Combined Assault but we had a tight development schedule on that one; we could only take it so far. So in many ways with the new title we're trying to go back to that, and actually going above and beyond that and really focusing on the environments to make sure that they're even more dense and intricate than previously.

That's one of the things we really want to play up--we want you to always be careful when you're going around a corner, because you may run into five guys coming at you the other way. We want you to really look at the environment and have to learn it to know all the different paths and different intricate ways that you can navigate the environment, so that you can find your own special routes and routes at different ways through it; so that you can really use the environment a lot more than we had in previously games. Because we kind of want the environment to be more of a part of the game in this one.

So no vehicles then in SOCOM: Confrontation?

Not initially, yeah.

Not initially?

Not initially. We're going to focus on really getting that on-foot game play to where we want it to be.

SOCOM: Confrontation--is that title meant to reflect this new direction, this refocus on the intimate combat that people liked so much about SOCOM II?

Definitely. But it also reflects the fact that it's an online-only title, so it's all about getting online and getting into different confrontations. Doesn't quite flow off the tongue but...

How much did Sony and Incognito's decision to make Warhawk a multiplayer-only title influence the direction of SOCOM: Confrontation?

Their decision was made after we had already started the game. So in many ways I think they copied us, to be honest, because I proposed this title from the very beginning to be an online-only game distributed through the Playstation Store. And then a month later they announced the same thing--well, they didn't announce it, it sort of leaked out. Unfortunately, now people look at that and I'm sure some people are going to ask, "Did you have a single-player mode that you cut?" No. From the very beginning [multiplayer] was our focus. We wanted to bring the SOCOM online experience to the Playstation 3 and really focus on that online experience. And since it's an online-only game there's no reason not to distribute it through the Playstation Store.

Why did you propose that it be multiplayer-only and downloadable through the store?

Well, by having it multiplayer-only we could just really focus on the online experience  which is something that we've been wanting to do for a while with SOCOM. The majority of the people that buy the game play it single-player and we always have to put a big focus on the single-player game. But our hardest hardcore fans out there are all the online players. We really wanted to really focus on that with this title and create something that is really going to be visceral and really detailed as far as the online is concerned. So that was definitely the goal with this title.

From your research, what percentage of people only played single-player?

The online usage has actually grown quite a bit from the first SOCOM game. So initially only about 30 percent of the people played it online and since--

This is for SOCOM I?

SOCOM I. About 70 to 75 percent of the people played it single-player only and as the series has been out longer, that's grown. SOCOM II was around 35 percent [online] and SOCOM III was around 40 percent, getting close to 50 percent with SOCOM Combined Assault. You know the online guys are really hardcore. They're playing it for four-and-a-half hours each sitting which to me is just insane, because  if that's the average then there are some people that must not work, because they're playing this thing for I don't know how long, like eight hours. If that's the average then these guys are crazy, they're nuts.

Did those growing percentages convince you that you could take a risk going multiplayer-only with SOCOM: Confrontation? Did you even see it as a risk going multiplayer-only?

Well I mean the configuration of the Playstation 3 was also a factor. PlayStation 3 is online out of the box. We're putting a big focus on the Playstation Network, the Playstation Store, so we really wanted to create a title that really took advantage of that, and having it be online focused allowed us to create this experience with a smaller team and within a smaller time frame and really--it just made a lot of sense for us for this title.

So smaller time frame, smaller team. Does that mean that this game is less expensive to make as a Playstation 3 title than other Playstation 3 titles that Sony's making?

Yeah, definitely. We're keeping it very focused. That's one of the factors of getting into Playstation 3; some of the budgets are really growing, they're really getting up there. With this game we really wanted it to be very focused and the budget sort of reflects that. It's actually more comparable to what [the budget] was for a PlayStation 2 game, which is kind of refreshing to see. The other thing with this title is that we haven't been working on it that long but we're actually pretty far along because we're utilizing a lot of those tools that they've been talking about: Playstation Edge and a lot of other shared technology from first party development. So this title was really able to leverage that and get a head start in rendering, in animation and performance by utilizing a lot of the shared technologies that frst party has been creating.

Tell me about the studio, Slant 6, that's developing the game. I was kind of surprised, sitting in the crowd, seeing the credits come up and it wasn't Zipper Interactive. Who are these guys? How did you find them? How did they get a prime gig like making SOCOM: Confrontation?

We've been working with Slant 6 now for about two years. They initially were working with the Sony Bend team on Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror. They were working on some technology for them, including the initial rendering engine for that game and we liked working with them. They were a really small team, about six to eight guys when we first started working with them. When Sony Bend started working on Dark Mirror internally and took all that technology over you know they were looking for something else to do with us. So we started working with them on SOCOM: Tactical Strike for the PSP. We've been working with them on that for over a year now. That game is a little different because we're trying to create a new type of interface, a new gameplay style so it's something we've been keeping with a small team and just playing around with it, really refining it over a longer period of time and finding out what's fun, what works, what doesn't work, which was a lot of fun to get to do that again because that's always a very rewarding part of the development process. When you've been working on so many sequels, you kind of lose that a little bit.

Things went very well with SOCOM: Tactical Strike, so when I had the idea for this other game--SOCOM: Confrontation--I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do with that and they were up for it. We started working with them on that with an initial prototype back in November when there were still eight people, and now they have 60 people working there. We were able to hire like mad over a three month period and gear up and get the team going in order to take on SOCOM: Confrontation.

And this was in Vancouver, right?

Yeah, in Vancouver, British Columbia.

So there were a lot of local studios you could draw on to staff up the team.

Yeah, we were really surprised at how rich the development environment is up in Vancouver with EA and Relic and Rockstar Vancouver and a lot of the other development teams. It was an area where there's a lot of talent--a lot of great artists, lot of great programmers and things have been going really well.

If SOCOM II is sort of the spiritual inspiration for Confrontation, is it fair to say that this is fanservice, that you've been listening to the fans and you're finally giving them the SOCOM that they've been wanting?

In some ways, but we're obviously going to create an experience that's appealing to everyone. It's not going to be something that is going to be appreciated only by the fans. This is going to be a next generation online title. We're focusing a lot on making it a very visceral, very fun game to pick up and play. As far as the direction, I think there is a lot of truth in saying that there were things that were better in SOCOM II than they were in SOCOM III and Combined Assault, and mainly it's that intimate experience with the environment, that sort of connection, where you knew the environment like the back of your hand--which is harder to do with a much larger environment. And that's what we're trying to get back to. We want to have these very detailed, dense environments that you're really going to get to know. When you're going through it, you're going to know where each object is and be able to highly utilize the environment.

Are there going to be any bots in the game for any sort of offline experience and if not, is that something you would consider sort of post launch?

It's something we're already considering. I can't--we're evaluating it and seeing, it's one of those things that we can do a lot with it on Playstation 3. I think most people think of bots and they think of the experience of a lot of the different PC games that have them. And we want to do something that's much different from that actually. We've been talking about it and we definitely want to do it, but it's not going to be a small addition because we want, we really want the bots to--SOCOM's a team based game. It's not like free-for-all mode where you just run around and shoot. It's not a frag-fest. So if we add bots, we need them to act like a team because that's really going to provide the best experience. So it's a much bigger challenge but it's definitely something that we want to take on.

You have the store at your disposal, the hard drive at your disposal and you're starting out with a multiplayer-only game The question is, how do you look at the service that you're creating in terms of additional content, the pace of it, the rhythm of it and even sort of transforming the experience. For example, there were the additional downloadable modes in Blast Factor. And then the second question is, how extensible is the SOCOM universe in your opinion?

You used a very important word there, which is "service." That's really what we're looking at providing with this game; we'll have the initial release, but then we're going to continue to build on that, not just with new maps but with new features that are going to enhance and evolve the game. The idea is that after we continue working on it for another six months, another year, you're going to get a much different experience out of the game than you got when it was initially released.
With the hard drive, with the Playstation store, we can continue to really evolve the original game and the experience that you get out of it. So it's something that's very interesting and something we're really looking at taking advantage of that we haven't really seen done in any other title. I guess the one exception would be Blast Factor where they added multiplayer later. But we plan on taking it much further than that and adding really meaningful additions that are going to have an impact on the game.

So essentially gameplay types--

Gameplay types are part of it. One of the things we're looking at in many ways is kind of redefining what the gameplay types are. So that's something that initially we were very focused on was getting a lot of the gameplay types in there that we had in existing games, but we also want to change up the play quite a bit and not only have these focused gameplay types but make it a little more dynamic and organic of a gameplay experience. So those are some of the things that we're thinking about and looking at doing post-release where we'll have gameplay types that aren't really a gameplay type. It's more like a little different experience. I can't--I don't want to go too much into it right now. I'm trying to prevent myself from giving too many details on it, because it is going to be a little ways out before we get there.

How extensible is the SOCOM universe?

Well I think it's very extensible and we have a lot of other things in the works already that I think you'll see in the future that are really going to show off how extensible that is. So it's--we're definitely, you know on PlayStation 2 we're pretty limited by the hardware, by many different things: budgets, time frames etc.
With Playstation 3 in many ways we're kind of starting over and one of the reasons why we're doing Confrontation is that we want to make sure we had that core SOCOM online experience on the Playstation 3 becausewe're looking at doing some things that are much different than what we had on PlayStation 2. So I can tell you that much. We have other things in the works that are going to be significantly different which is why I also wanted to make sure we had something for all those fans of the original experience, which I think is a very good experience. It's not dated at all. It's still a really good experience. We want to make sure we still maintain that experience.

One last question. Is the SOCOM series done on PS2?

SOCOM is done on the PS2, yeah unfortunately.

You feel sad about that?

No.

Was it just time?

It was time. We always got knocked about the AI but we did the best that we could on the PlayStation 2. It's really challenging to do the type of AI that we wanted to do on the PlayStation 2. And now you know with the Playstation 3 and the cell processor, it's a whole new ballgame and so in many ways we're really excited to be you know moving on to the next generation platforms and exploring what we can do there.

Excellent. Seth, thanks very much.