Global Agenda influences include City of Heroes and Team Fortress 2

Global Agenda is an upcoming 'spy-fi' shooter MMO that's garnering a fair amount of attention as it gets closer to release. It's the brainchild of Erez Goren, an entrepreneur who channeled his successes in the IT industry (including Point of Sale systems with game-like interfaces) into his own dream project, becoming its founder, CEO, and lead designer. Global Agenda will be the first game to be released by Hi-Rez Studios.

The title is a blend of sci-fi shooter and MMO where player actions can impact the game's world. Goren tells PC Gamer's Evan Lahti: "We were inspired by the fluid, action combat feel of [Tribes and TF2], but wanted even greater diversity of classes and devices and set our game within a persistent world of player-driven conflict where the results of combat matches really affects the world."

This element of world control could prove appealing for Global Agenda's agencies (guilds), which will gain key advantages in tandem with their territorial control. These agency PvP campaigns will play out over time, allowing gamers to see their progress visually and plan their strategies for control of the map.

"On a macro level, it looks like a board game -- each agency is allotted its own map of hexes that they develop by terraforming territory and building structures that earn resources or add defensive buffs once you're in combat," Lahti writes. "Week-to-week, other agencies target individual hexes to attack, which each represent a map instance for scheduling a match."

Goren clearly believes they're creating something significant -- he's invested 20 million of his own dollars into the game, according PC Gamer (republished at Games Radar). Goren also points out his gaming interests that influence Global Agenda; he's a long-time City of Heroes player who's also put over 100 hours of play time into *each* of Team Fortress 2's classes. Lahti writes how this background can be seen in Global Agenda's gameplay, "In one brief skirmish, we're seeing a kind of TF2 with lasers, even a second coming of PlanetSide on a smaller scale."

If you're interested in seeing more about this hybrid of a shooter and MMO, be sure to check out the Global Agenda site for images and video; they're also taking sign-ups for beta.