Syndicate (1993)
Syndicate is a 1993 strategy video game made by Bullfrog Productions and Electronic Arts.
The near future belongs to corporations, and Syndicate puts you inside one of them. From a top-down isometric view, you deploy squads of cybernetically enhanced agents across a rain-slicked world map, capturing territories through covert operations, assassination, and brute force. Tax the territories you hold too hard and rebellion follows; arm your agents too lightly and rivals roll them. Bullfrog's 1993 game is cold, strategic, and morally unconcerned with your methods, a pure corporate power fantasy with real mechanical teeth.
Quick answers
What is Syndicate about?
The near future belongs to corporations, and Syndicate puts you inside one of them. From a top-down isometric view, you deploy squads of cybernetically enhanced agents across a rain-slicked world map, capturing territories through covert operations, assassination, and brute force. Tax the territories you hold too hard and rebellion follows; arm your agents too lightly and rivals roll them. Bullfrog's 1993 game is cold, strategic, and morally unconcerned with your methods, a pure corporate power fantasy with real mechanical teeth.
When was Syndicate released?
Syndicate was released on 6 June 1993.
Who made Syndicate?
Syndicate was made by Bullfrog Productions, Electronic Arts and Electronic Arts Victor.
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Syndicate in our writing
- Companion guide: Bullfrog: God Games, Dungeon Keepers and the Molyneux Years
- Companion guide: Cyberpunk: The Complete Guide to the Wired World
A few thoughts on Syndicate
Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation shares Syndicate's taste for covert operations, shadowy organizations, and operatives deployed against a system that cares nothing for collateral damage. For a game-side companion, BioShock explores the same question of what corporate and ideological control does to a society.
Cyberpunk corporate warfare
Syndicate's dystopia is built on the premise that nation-states lost and corporations won. The best cyberpunk stories ask the same question: what kind of people thrive under those rules?