MAGblog: What's up everyone? For this edition of the MAG Blog, we thought we'd take a closer look at Zipper's pair of MAG Test Leads, Jay Embry and Kurt Manning. A key position for videogame developers everywhere, Test Leads are the folks responsible for making sure that the game works the way it's supposed to – managing projects for the quality assurance team (QA) who find and fix bugs or other issues that would otherwise affect the overall game experience.
These guys have incredibly busy schedules, sometimes putting in 18-hour days, all for the betterment of our fun. To get a better idea of what the Test Leads do for MAG, we sat down with Jay and Kurt to ask them about their roles and their involvement in the finished MAG product.
Zipper Interactive were once one of Sony's most important studios and became a household name due to their work on the SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs series during the PlayStation 2's heyday. Their most ambitious title was MAG. Could it make a comeback?
Best game ever. I had put over 1700hrs into that game before it deteriorated too far with cheaters getting out of the map and sadly decided it was time to let it die (Zipper had already been closed down by that time).
This is the game in modern gaming that even got me into shooters i spent literally days with this game Raven All the way. War against the the mighty D ride oh so edgy S.V.E.R.
3 teams of 32 fighting it out would be considered Battle Royaleish. If you're gonna saying teams are OK when you start doing teams of 2 or 3 or 4, then 32v32v32 should work. And on besides that, it had 128 v 128 which was insanely fun.
I personally hadn't played much of it. I did spend a lot of time in PlanetSide 2 though (somewhat like MAG). Games like these tend to get overrun by cheaters and then ruined too often.
MAG didn't have that issue as far as I remember. I use to love the 256 matches. That game had an amazing community. Everyone actually communicated and played together. No one B****ed at the team. Everyone understood there was so much going on that if things are going wrong. Everyone had to think of new strategies.
Fav moment was when all 3 other squads 32 took their objectives but we were struggling with ours and had one more to blow up. The other leaders were communicating asking if the 2 nearest squads should send ppl. Our leader was like Naw I got a idea. So he told us all to die and set ourselves at the nearest hills prone without being seen. So we all did and surrounded the areas.
He said everyone on his count throw your grenades. Then snipers go all out and everyone else run in. They won't be able to get everyone and if needed the snipers go in about 10 seconds after.
Everyone did that and I got to the objective and set it off. 9 of us survived and got it. felt amazing to say I got the objective, cover me in that moment. Wish it was PS4 so I could have saved that moment
It was literally the coolest moment I had in a online shooter, closest since was BF4.
@Teflon
That does indeed sound like an awesome moment. One that makes games like these memorable for sure. It does seem like MAG had a lot more cooperation than most any online shooter
It did because you absolutely can't get no where in it without teamwork. It also didn't have an extremely big base of players. Everyone who played really wanted to play. I really hope they bring it back and do the same thing to only have serious players get into the big matches again
I adored this game too. Some of my best FPS online memories on it. So freaking good.
I'd love to see another game like this come out at some point. And NOT like Planetside... M.A.G. was something special.
Yeah problem is if it existed now adays, it would likely be riddled with xp boosts and dance moves and all that other pay garbage...
MAG and Warhawk are the only 2 online games I ever got into, and both need a PROPER sequel on PS5.
Remember the first time I got 100 kills in a match, was in a turret with a repair kit and just mowed down wave after wave on Valors map.
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This is a game that was ahead of its time. Had it came out on PS4 it would've done much better. I put hundreds of hours into this despite the problems it had on PS3.
Really interesting as an Xbox owner at the time. This game had captured my interest as a kid but I never got a chance to play it. Being on PS4 and soon possibly PS5, I would love to see this franchise brought back to life. I imagine with the power of next gen it would be really quite fun.
From what I hear and what I remember, this game was FAR ahead of it's time. A real shame it never truly took off from my understanding.
I'm an xbox boy since mech warrior but got a ps3 slim for mag. If you liked halo or cod you'd have had a blast in mag. Was one of the first games you could actually do something other than shooting and still make a difference in game.
PS4 needs something like it. In the multiplayer space it's far behind the Xbox, there are no quality multiplayer games on it that aren't on other consoles.
Yes, yes, and yes. Way ahead of it's time. Would love to see a PS5 variant of this game.
Erina Rose, Sausage Roll writes, "Call of Duty: Modern War introduced a new, improved, Ground War game mode this weekend that reminds us of the old PlayStation 3 classic, MAG."
I never played mag, I did play this beta however, and if mag was like this beta then (fart noises) for mag.
Seriously though. Nowadays this and next gen are practically begging for a new MAG.
How did we go from having games like resistance 1, 2, warhawk with 30 vs 30 player battles, and M.A.G. with 128 vs 128 players, ON LAST GEN to now having 20 vs 20...such a step back.
Because Sony hadn't figured out how to market their exclusives yet. Plus at that time COD craze was at its peak. So "generic high school bro #7," who was the primary purchaser of FPSs at that time (or at least represented a crowd necessary to sustain a playerbase), if he even had a PS3, would have just seen a game like MAG as a "copycat of Black Ops, man."
Not to mention MAG was pretty terribly uninviting for new people after awhile, because it was more skill-based. This was great for veterans, but if you weren't willing to put in the time getting destroyed for awhile, you would never appreciate the game. The Battlefield: Bad Company and BF:3 games out during that gen were far more accessible to lower level players.
Battlefield 4 was at the start of the generation and had 64 players, to me it depends more on how the map/gameplay is utilized, i enjoyed the 20vs20 modes more in the MW Beta than the 64 player ground war mode.
And even those are very small vibes, it still feels like COD at the end of the day.
Almost 10 years ago the greatest first person shooter came out and most of you probably never heard of it, never got to play it and never will.
I remember this game and it was amazing. I would like it if Sony would make another one because this game was ahead of it's time.
It was an amazing concept and it was a cool game, it was just ahead of it's time. I played the sh!t outta MAG, but the game itself played just okay. I'd love to have seen a sequel, even just a spiritual successor, especially with the next gen coming and the way cloud computing has advanced a game like that nowadays would be awesome.
It may have been amazing if you played for SVER, but if you played for Raven or Valor, it was an unbalanced mess. I had some fun with it, but the player count was an illusion at best and false advertising at it's worst. The map and faction balance was so ridiculously skewed you knew who was going to win as soon as you saw what team you were against. It definitely had some interesting ideas, but was far from an amazing experience in my opinion. I would have much rather Zipper have made another SOCOM game rather than MAG.
that game would make for a great battle royale release. So many players all at once... it was ahead of its time for a console shooter.
Was such an underrated game. One of my most favorite fps of last gen. So unfortunate zipper was closed down. Imagine if it was a success and thered be a 2nd game by now.....
I can think of many better games that I've yet to play...
"Almost 10 years ago the greatest first person shooter came out"
HAH. So is Planetside 2 now the best FPS ever? Because it does everything MAG can and does it far better. I'm afraid that MAG is basically your standard FPS but uses scale as it's selling point. The vast majority of shooters that focus on smaller scale matches have gameplay leaps and bounds better than MAG so it is definitely not the greatest FPS.
I know many people are going to try and refute this by telling me to look at the three factions but MAG has literally no character. The game is call 'Massive. Action. Game' for gods sake which is a contender for 'The Worst Title a Game Could Have' award. I've never been a fan of Zipper but I hear great things about them from their PS2 days. However, with MP gaining popularity in the generation that followed I think it says a lot that they couldn't keep up with the competition.
'HAH. So is Planetside 2 now the best FPS ever? Because it does everything MAG can and does it far better.'.
It was released years later.
Was there anything offering what MAG did when MAG was released?
"Was there anything offering what MAG did when MAG was released?"
Yes, Planetside 1.
MAG was one of the very few games trying to do scale like it did, but I think it missed the mark. Wish it could have had a sequel though as they may have been able to iterate on it to create something pretty neat.
Sony had a awesome approach to online in the PS2 days with SOCOM co op that had games working together to achieve a tactical goal they pioneered voice chat on the PS2 for SOCOM but as they steamrolled ahead it was clear team Deathmatch would take over in popularity which shifted zippers approach so all their experience amounted for not much when designing online in the PS3 era.
It still was a decent game but couldn't stand out compared to cod which had millions of players consistently
Loved mag had over 1700hrs into it across many accounts, remember my first 100 kill sabotage game, was insane
Yes, so do I and not that game they released on PS3. I'm talking the one Zipper did and not Slant Six. At least Slant Six tried to do the series justice once they fixed the issues.
The one Zipper did didn't feel like Socom to me. It felt more like Ghost Recon to be honest. I absolutely loved the voice commands and I figured they would be even better on next gen hardware. They didn't even bother doing anything.
Maybe, I just wanted it more grounded and not so techy if that makes sense. I just wanted to go into jungles or missions just using my wits and patience and not have to use a bunch of gadgets. I wanted to be able to give orders with my voice to squad members. Yeah, they can at least have earpieces lol.
It's hard to explain but I know the old school Socom players know what I'm saying. Socom just had a certain feeling and the new game didn't feel that way. Slant Six yes. Zipper no...
We can only hope but if they bring it back they have to do it right. If not don't bother and just make something new. I rather have the memories I had with Socom be mostly positive than negative. Unless you pull a God of War, don't bother lol.
I've already said too much but that goes to show how much I loved Socom. Especially 1 and 2.....
Game was simply ahead of its time. If mag came out now with improved graphics people would be blown away. Back then people whined about the graphics even though it had players literally everywhere. It was several great games in one. Battlefield, Ghost Recon, and Call of duty.
What exactly was it ahead of its time in? Player count? Planetside released in 2003 and and played count per match was over 300.
The BETA for MAG was one of my fondest gaming moments. I was highly anticipating the start of the beta servers but I had school that day. I had started downloading it that morning as soon as it was available and just when it finished downloading I found out school was cancelled, last minute, because of weather. BEST. SNOW DAY. EVER. I played the beta all day, continuing to put off my homework :P
Well have I got news for you pal! Planetside 2 has been available for nearly 4 years on the PS4 and longer on PC and people still aren't blown away. Maybe the novelty of scale is actually overrated and people don't care as much about it which is why MAG failed when multiplayer shooters were at peak popularity during it's lifetime?
If you were blown away by 256 players in 2010 why would you not have been blown away by 1000 roughly 2-3 years later?
My Qore beta access doesn't work anymore :( but it's all good. I'll give me a nice surprise to the changes made by Jan release. Hope they don't delay it though.
Great interview. We need more stuff like this for gamers to acquire more knowledge of the art of creating VGs.
gamestop beta still working tho 24/7 no schedule
I just can't wait for mag is gona be fun day 1 buy baby!!!
This will be no modern warfare but i guess it will be decent.