SOCOM 4 / Creative Director

SOCOM 4 (Zipper Interactive/Sony Computer Entertainment) was a behemoth of a title. Originally slated as more of a tactical combat with less of a focus on story (which we called Ops Commander internally), S4 would ship with a single player campaign, competitive multiplayer, co-operative missions and native support for the PlayStation Move gun controller which I helped design as well.

As CD I was responsible for managing the Design team and the Audio team at Zipper, spanning both SOCOM 4 and MAG. For SOCOM, I oversaw the writing and editing of the script and in-game dialogue, as well as casting. I helped direct our combined motion/VO capture sessions, directed the story and level design and worked with our audio team on music and dialogue. One of the highlights of the project was being able to sign on Bear McCreary to compose a unique sound and score for the game.

Outside of the day-to-day development I worked with our partners at Sony to balance our design with the strategic and tactical needs of SCEA and with the marketing team. It was a challenging game in many ways - most notably because of the need to change the formula from the SOCOM titles that came before it, and attempting to create a strong narrative-driven story which was new for our more multiplayer-focused studio. SOCOM 4 pushed many personal goals; we were able to include a strong female character who passed the Bechdel test, have a strong cast of supporting character and leverage the cutting-edge motion- and camera-capture technology of Sony's Visual Art Services Group in San Diego.