PAX East Recap

[Commander Fury]

Hello! My name is Travis Steiner and I am the Lead Designer for SOCOM 4. Last week I joined a few co-workers and traveled to PAX East in Boston to showcase SOCOM 4 multiplayer to the public. PAX was really the first time we've put SOCOM 4 multiplayer in front of a large number of consumers, and the response we got was absolutely fantastic!

Our Team

Kevin Schmitt - Lead Multiplayer Designer

Cade Myers - Multiplayer Producer

Ryan Fedje - Core Gameplay Designer

Kristina Cheng – Product Marketing Specialist

 

The Booth Setup

The booth was right next to the PAX store, so traffic was very good. There were 16 stations set up in an enclosed area and they were full during the entire show. We strived for 10 minute matches and by the end of each one, a fresh group of 16 were eagerly awaiting outside. Players were a healthy mix of lifelong SOCOM fans, shooter players, and gamers completely new to SOCOM and/or PlayStation.

 

The booth was packed the entire show.

The Event

I heard there were more than 60,000 people coming through PAX this year; definitely a different crowd than E3! There was no need to hire booth talent to promote the games as the fans were more than happy to dress up for free. I narrowly dodged a spinning star kick from a guy dressed up as Chun Li!

The Tournament

On Sunday, people started lining up at 10am for the 2pm showdown. We handed out colored wristbands so they didn't have to stay there for half the day. The first 64 to show up were formed into teams of eight. We started with 20 minute Standard Suppression matches for the first two rounds of the tournament, then switched it over to Classic Suppression for the semi-finals and finals. Many of these games were incredibly close! There were numerous comebacks and at least two of the games were decided by a few kills or less; pretty amazing considering the games were 20 minutes long and the scores were into the 150s. For the finale, we took the last remaining group of eight and split them in half for a 4v4 match. The winning group of four were so excited! They were comprised of both a die-hard SOCOM fan and a guy who had not previously played a SOCOM game.

 

Even the losing teams stuck around to watch the finale, get photographs with the team, and have memorabilia signed. A few fans even rescheduled a long train ride home to stick around. In the final minutes of the show, the Zipper crew challenged the winners to a three-round match on Classic Abandoned. To our relief, we actually put up a good fight! We won the first round, then they bounced back and got us on the second one. The final round ended in a draw! That really was the best outcome... good times all around.

 

Tournament winners Code Reid, MrPhizz, SoccerJaga and Jason pose with the team.

PAX was totally exhausting, but it was absolutely worth it. Meeting all of the dedicated SOCOM fans was definitely the highlight! We couldn’t be happier with the response we got and now look forward to playing with everyone in the multiplayer beta. If you can't wait until the beta opens up for everyone on April 5th, check out the official SOCOM forums and our Twitter page for code giveaways to get into the ongoing private phase that's happening now!

 

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