Sean Cooper On Syndicate

Talking to IncGamers' Peter Parrish, creator of videogame icon Syndicate, Sean Cooper, reveals the secrets behind the success of the franchise and why he feels it's unlikely to see it again.

Sean Cooper is sceptical about any revival of the Syndicate name. "They've been saying that for the last fifteen years," says the man credited with design and programming of the original game, "looking at EA's track record of announcing titles, saying they're going to revive it ... they don't tend to do it, because I don't think they really understand what the original game was."

"Every time I've seen a prototype of a new Syndicate it's just been misguided. They've tried to be too quirky. They've tried to do things that aren't what the essence of the game was." During his time at EA, Sean witnessed a couple of demo builds come and go and was unimpressed by what he saw;  "One of [the prototypes] ... it was something about using different senses. Something was leaving a scent and the agents were following it. I remember seeing them demo it in a conference room and thinking 'what are they trying to achieve? what are they doing?'"

"The essence of the game was killing people - and that was it. Big guns. Strong dudes. Terminators essentially. If I have to kill everyone, I will. That to me was the essence of the gameplay."

Dark Future

When Bullfrog released Syndicate in 1993, that ethos shone through. The world portrayed in isometric 3D was a sort of libertarian super-dystopia, where corporate interests were imposed by cyber-agents down the barrel of a gun. Missions took place in industrialised population centres patrolled by under-equipped police forces, who would attempt to maintain order as heavily-armed agents pursued their own goals. Civilian casualties were nearly always high.

The sheer brutality of the future depicted by Syndicate can be traced back to the earliest moments in its development; "Peter [Molyneux] was moving on to Populous 2. I'd just done Flood, which was my first game, and he wanted to know what I wanted to do next. The group of us from Bullfrog, I think it was six or seven of us, we all went down the pub and got shitfaced and just said 'what shall we do next?' The discussion went from there. If you look back on the origins of the project it comes from statements like 'we wanna gun everyone down, we want to kill loads of people.' From there we thought 'well how can we deliver that?'"

These early thoughts became 'Bob' (later renamed Cyber Assault and then, on EA's recommendation, Syndicate), an isometric engine where eight blue and orange characters could run around as a squad and fire at designated spots on the ground. When multiplayer code was finalised that allowed the team to play this across Bullfrog's internal network, the agents were now able to shoot at one other. Clearly though, this wasn't enough. Sean explains how the idea of a general population presence in the game grew from the strange duality of high concept simulation and the simple desire for more targets to aim at; "I think Peter was the one who said 'we should have a population that go to work,' and all the press releases at the time were describing this great new simulation where people would go to work and then go home. It was a bit of nonsense, but good hype at the time."

Ultimately, the civilians ended up closer to mindless cannon fodder - but still retained an important role in creating the impression of life. "Yeah, [in the finished game] they mill around, they look like they're going in and out of buildings" says Sean, "we weren't trying to create a simulation, it was just a slight illusion so the vast majority of players would see a living city. The essence of it was really to give players the conscious decision to gun those people down if they wanted to."

This potential for wanton, bloody violence could have posed a problem for Bullfrog. Prior to the release of Syndicate, Mortal Kombat had drawn fire for its outlandish use of gore and Cannon Fodder, a Sensible Software title, had found itself the subject of a minor tabloid inquest after being criticised by the Royal British Legion for using a poppy on its cover. Had there been any concerns that Syndicate, featuring the ability to wade into a crowd of innocent people with a flamethrower, may fall foul of similar outrage?

"Not at all, no. Anyone making a moral argument with me was just going to lose the battle, because I'd just ignore them. That's how I felt. This was the reality of the game - the blood comes with it. The Germans kicked up a fuss and said 'no blood, no blood' so we made it white or green ... something android coloured, that was the way around it. But it's just ridiculous, because people still know it's blood, they still read it as blood."