Former SOCOM developer unveils new shooter

Former SOCOM and Rainbow Six: Patriots creative lead David Sears is planning a new tactical shooter game, H-Hour: World's Elite.

Sears took to Kickstarter to raise $200,000 to partly-fund development of the game, published by Special Operations Forces Studios (SOFS). Sears worked on the first two SOCOM games while at Zipper Entertainment, a series of squad-based tactical shooters for PlayStation platforns that found significant success. More recently, he headed up design on Ubisoft's Rainbow Six: Patriots, before the creative team was replaced by management.

"Over the years since the first two SOCOMs shipped a lot of people have asked me to pick up where I left off," said Sears. "I can't do that because I don't own the IP. But what if I don't try to make a sequel? What if I take the design approach from those early days and imagine what an evolved version of those games would be like today?"

He said that dominant shooting games today often lack authenticity, "You have to know the line that you walk. Too much [realism] and your game is boring. Too little and you're a theme park ride. I know how to tell the difference. I've done it before. "

He said that H-Hour: World's Elite will be a "spiritual successor" to the early SOCOM games, featuring scenarios and stories based on high-level special-ops warriors. The company plans to first release a six-map multiplayer pack, followed by a single-player campaign. The Kickstarter is partly designed to persuade larger investors to commit to the project.

In the Kickstarter pitch, Sears wrote, "Shooters don't have to be about long cutscenes or pointless 'wow' moments, They don't need to involve sprinting around constrictive maps and magnetic bullets. They should be about connecting on a human level with other players, honoring the contributions of our military colleagues through respect for authenticity, and bringing like-minded people together online to strategize, execute and win."