As MAG’s first birthday celebration comes to a close, we thought fans might find it interesting if we pulled back the curtain a bit and revealed info about MAG that no one outside of Zipper Interactive and Sony Computer Entertainment has ever known… until now!

Think you’re a MAG expert? Think again! Listed below are five facts listed in backwards order of their mind-blowing magnitude.

5. The three PMCs – Raven, SVER, and Valor – weren’t always known by those names. Over time, they underwent a number of title changes. Valor was known as the “Allied Forces” and “Hammer,” SVER was “SEVER” and “SIRSAT, and Raven was… well, check further down the list to see what Raven was called.

4. Though MAG was Zipper’s first “released” PS3 game, it wasn’t always planned to be. Prior to the greenlight for MAG, we were tossing around several ideas – including an espionage-themed action/platformer that thrived on chase sequences and the concept for what would ultimately become the game due out this April, SOCOM 4.

3. MAG could be even bigger. MAG is renowned for its 256-player support – and we earned the Guinness World Record for most simultaneous players in a console FPS as proof – but that’s not the limit of our technology. Truth be told, we can support a lot more than that. We picked 256 players as our target for game design reasons (how we divide up squads, platoons, etc). However, with our architecture, we could increase the number players well beyond the 256-person limit if we wanted to – we’d just want to make sure our design fit whatever super huge number we wanted to go after first.

2. MAG began its life as a SOCOM game. Originally, we had planned to make MAG a part of the SOCOM universe. In fact, its first working title was “SOCOM: MAG.” As the game began to take shape, however, it became apparent that what MAG was growing into was much different than SOCOM. The gameplay design, while still somewhat-tactical, continued to become less “SOCOM-like.” The emphasis on character progression and large-scale multiplayer battles with three completely different PMCs sealed the deal, and MAG happily spun off into its own universe. Oh, and remember that Raven “early title” we mentioned? Yeah, they were “Clawhammer!”

1. MAG started as a third-person shooter. Because it started as a SOCOM title, MAG was a third-person shooter for a good portion of its development cycle. When the first MAG trailer was shown at E3 2008, for instance, the game was still planned as a TPS (and the teaser hints at it pretty strongly). As we continued to refine MAG, however, and pull it father away from its SOCOM beginnings, we moved it into the first-person realm to help differentiate it even more. After we played it, when knew absolutely that going first-person was the right choice for the game and the rest, as they say, is history!

We hope you enjoyed this look into the Zipper vault of secrets and hope that you enjoyed our game even more.