From the battlefield to the boardroom

Huge corporations always make good villains, and the reboot of the videogame 'Syndicate' seems especially appropriate, to the modern age, writes JOE GRIFFIN

BIG, FACELESS corporations have always made good villains. From Spectre in the old Bond movies to the Dharma Initiative in Lostto the Umbrella Corporation in the Resident Evilgames and films. Working behind closed doors, their tentacles stretch not only into our pockets but into our government offices. They work as grotesque carnival mirrors of the companies we know and distrust. And with every passing year (especially the past four years), outrage, collective paranoia and distrust of big business seem to grow.

Collectively, fictitious mega-companies have been responsible for (among other atrocities), plotting world domination, creating zombie viruses, illegal weapons trading, irresponsible genetic engineering, harvesting innocent people’s organs and (of course) malevolent interference in government. Some of the less responsible real-life big businesses have behaved in a similar way.

Released back in 1993, the videogame Syndicatepainted a cynical picture: Businesses eclipsed governments and corporate warfare took on a more literal meaning, as war was waged between corporations, not nations. Taking the role of shady security officers, gamers' tasks included kidnapping rival companies' scientists and assassinating rival chief executives.

Now, nearly two decades later, as we're still sifting through the real-life wreckage of regulation-free lending and borrowing, it's a coincidentally appropriate time for a new Syndicategame. Obviously we haven't reached a stage where companies can send a fully armed goon squad to a rival's HQ, but Syndicateoffers a fun exaggeration of the impunity that some businesses have enjoyed.

In the world of Syndicate,people become citizens of corporations, not countries – not a million miles away from the intense loyalty that consumers show to their favourite brands. The game also nods to the increased working and commuting hours that we have to endure.

Jeff Gamon is executive producer of the new Syndicate: “I think the story and the world are more relevant than they were in 1993, when the first game came out,” he says. “When it came out originally, that sort of thing [corporations’ influence on government] was more in the movies. But now, what we have feels almost real and credible, which makes it a great story because it makes you feel more uncomfortable – the idea that it could be happening.

"I hate to think of a world that ends up like Syndicate, but it feels like that kind of corruption and corporate governance is certainly possible."

Since corporations in Syndicateare the new nations, Gamon explains, they each have their own identity. "There are three main syndicates," he says, "each has their own culture – the Aspari, the Euroculter and Consumercorp. The world is set around these consumers and their environments they inhabit, so the action takes place there."

Moving a first-person-shooter game from the battlefields to the boardrooms also helps make Syndicatelook distinctive, as agents parasail into skyscrapers, duke it out in laboratories and maul each other in meeting rooms. Gamon says that as well as modern, trendy architecture of financial quarters, the 1982 sci-fi film Blade Runnerwas an influence, as was "that pristine world of Minority Report."

Syndicateis released early next year, hopefully long before Europe collapses and is bought out by a global mega-corp . . .