The Agency

From:  www.eurogamer.net/article.php

Hal Milton, lead designer of Sony Online Entertainment's in-development spy MMO The Agency, says we'll see how the game is progressing at next year's trade shows.

The Agency was first announced in June 2007, but nothing new has been seen of it since a demo was shown at the Consumer Electronics Show at the very start of this year. It was the same demo that turned up at E3, Leipzig, and SOE's own Fan Faire.

In an interview with Massively, Milton said that the game would reappear in the public eye in the summer.

"I'm not supposed to talk about any specific dates right now but I think you're going to see some stuff at a few of those 'small' shows next summer, the ones they throw every year," he said - presumably indicating the likes of E3, Games Convention and the Penny Arcade Expo.

"We went kind of intentionally dark after CES, we've been pretty quiet this year so we could go heads-down on the content," Milton explained.

He said the team was focused on creating new zones and mission content at the moment, and "the full polish mode is sort of burbling underneath. We're polishing as we go while the features come in."

Prague has already been built, the first passes on Kiev and Warsaw are in, and work has started on Central America too. "We got back this fantastic Panamanian shooting gallery, just so damned beautiful," Milton enthused.

He noted that SOE had committed a plenty of resources to making the game. "In the world of MMOs and triple-A game development we are actually a pretty reasonably-sized team. We're slightly under a hundred people," he said.

New info can't come soon enough. The Agency is coming to both PS3 and PC, and is our most-wanted MMO here at Eurogamer - for its slick espionage theme, squad-shooter gameplay and innovative design. Browse the Agency gamepage and our preview for more.

Incidentally, Milton was speaking to Massively to quell rumours that the game had been cancelled - rumours so obviously false that we didn't bother repeating them here. We only mention them now because Milton's response can't be left unquoted.

"No, no, we're not cancelled. We have actually changed focus completely, though. We're now making a 'Kitt Kittredge: live the life of an elite spunky pioneer girl' series," he lied.

"I think it's a great change for the product, I think our Eastern European assets will work well as assets for new colonial America.

"I think people will appreciate the change, we've had to make gambling games into more Thanksgiving hunter-gatherer experiences, but other than that everything is the same."  Endquote

Muhahaha Game Fly did know something.

See you in September! Muahahahaha!
 

Made by SOE don't care. NO one was gonna play it anyway. I say it cancelled.

Originally posted by PipodeMoleas

Made by SOE don't care. NO one was gonna play it anyway. I say it cancelled.

Over? Over? Its not over until the fat lady licks Smedley's  Hemorrhoids.   Look at SWG-NGE ,

A company dealing in the slightest shade of reality would have canceled that monstrosity a month after its debut and replace it with the real thing.... did that happen?.... Hell NO!

I want to know what Virtual Reality SOE lives in.

I know I'm going to be called a Sony fanboi for saying this (because everyone here is like uber1337wtfbbqpwned) but whatever Sony does, it's for a reason.  Everyone thinks Sony is such a terrible company for their history, yet everyone forgets the good things about their past, kinda like the Bush administration.

They are always blamed for the NGE, yet it was Lucas Arts' call on that one.  They are blamed for Vanguard failing, yet they never touched the game development until Sigil went belly up.

Sony knows what they are doing, they are smart business people.  They've won the format war after a late start with excellent ideas, which they have more of to shed into their other projects.

Originally posted by Juztinb42

I know I'm going to be called a Sony fanboi for saying this (because everyone here is like uber1337wtfbbqpwned) but whatever Sony does, it's for a reason.  Everyone thinks Sony is such a terrible company for their history, yet everyone forgets the good things about their past, kinda like the Bush administration.

They are always blamed for the NGE, yet it was Lucas Arts' call on that one.  They are blamed for Vanguard failing, yet they never touched the game development until Sigil went belly up.

Sony knows what they are doing, they are smart business people.  They've won the format war after a late start with excellent ideas, which they have more of to shed into their other projects.

"I know I'm going to be called a Sony fanboi for saying this (because everyone here is like uber1337wtfbbqpwned) but whatever Sony does, it's for a reason. Everyone thinks Sony is such a terrible company for their history, yet everyone forgets the good things about their past, kinda like the Bush administration."

These are the kind of comments that trip me out what was the analogy to the Bush administration supposed to accomplish or prove other than that you must be a die hard Republican?

"They are always blamed for the NGE, yet it was Lucas Arts' call on that one. They are blamed for Vanguard failing, yet they never touched the game development until Sigil went belly up."

I've heard this debate before but have yet to see a smoking gun that can be used to show that SOE had nothing to do with the NGE.

"Sony knows what they are doing, they are smart business people. They've won the format war after a late start with excellent ideas, which they have more of to shed into their other projects."

What are you even talking about here? The only thing I can think of is that you are insinuating that EQ has influenced the design of most modern mmo's which garners from me a big so what since we've seen console rpgs use pretty similar formats for quite sometime they didn't invent anything new and as a matter of fact SOE did not even develop EQ in house.

One thing is certain you march to the beat of a vastly different drum.
 

Here's a small tidbit about those oh so smart people over there at SOE

"You failed to mention them signing a deal with the devil over publishing, the famous quote "I spoke to Smedley and SOE have it down cold!". Many warned against SOE, I was still going to purchase until SOE f***ed up on a titanic scale. I couldn't purchase a pre-order because SOE hadn't shipped them, those that could get them (a few stores in the USA) ended up either not having the disc or the gamecode because someone at SOE forgot to put them in there!

I wanted this to work. I wanted to play it, however now it seems it'll be purchased by Smedley to add to the list of dismal faliures associated with the SOE brand name. If PotBS were a sailing ship she'd be the Marie Celeste, on a direct course to the SOE dry docks alongside Vanguard!
 

"

This does not sound like the methodology of smart people who know what they are doing.