H1Z1 is probably Sony Online Entertainment's next game, but what is it?

What is H1Z1 ? We've spotted what seems to be a game homepage for Sony Online's next project. We've heard the name H1Z1 before, actually: in January, when we learned that SOE had registered it as a trademark .

Even then the internet was speculating that H1Z1 was probably a survival game, and this foggy, full-mooned teaser site only supports that idea. Occluded by the fug is what seems to be a rural community, possibly a trailer park. The greater pieces of evidence, though, are two photos that SOE President John Smedley shared over Twitter in January:

Other than the seemingly contemporary setting, one thing we can glean from the images of the church above is the change in time and lighting, a feature we'd expect from a multiplayer zombie survival game. Time-of-day is a feature of SOE's Forgelight engine, which PlanetSide 2 and Landmark also run on.

There isn't much that we can infer from the page's source code (excerpted above), other than some associated links to SOE's digital delivery service, Station . Line 149 references what seems to be an age check, but that's probably to do with general restrictions on online account creation rather than something related to the subject matter of the game.

We'll probably know more quite soon, though—another Smedley tweet mentions that we'll see more of the game tomorrow on Game Talk Live , a livestream channel, and a reply tweet indicates that “you can play it yourself soon. and by play I mean play fully.”

Evan Lahti
Strategic Director

Evan's a hardcore FPS enthusiast who joined PC Gamer in 2008. After an era spent publishing reviews, news, and cover features, he now oversees editorial operations for PC Gamer worldwide, including setting policy, training, and editing stories written by the wider team. His most-played FPSes are CS:GO, Team Fortress 2, Team Fortress Classic, Rainbow Six Siege, and Arma 2. His first multiplayer FPS was Quake 2, played on serial LAN in his uncle's basement, the ideal conditions for instilling a lifelong fondness for fragging. Evan also leads production of the PC Gaming Show, the annual E3 showcase event dedicated to PC gaming.

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