Overview

• Futuristic cyberpunk/bladerunner world
• The game world is the entire planet. The main game interface is a world-map covered in cities which, once you travel there, are maps full of hundreds of buildings, ranging from small businesses (pet stores, dry cleaners, book stores, etc.) to large businesses and services (corporate towers, power plants, science research facilities)
• Many crime organizations (syndicates) inhabit this world, each of which has a corporate headquarters in one specific city, and branch offices in other cities.
• The Government is the only entity that poses a serious threat to all syndicates; they keep the syndicates in line if they start to get too big, so that they can't completely dominate the game.
• Syndicates have maximum power and control in the city that houses their corporate headquarters. It'll be extremely difficult for another syndicate to take that city -- especially the headquarters. This can operate as a kind of 'safe zone'.
• Government has less influence in the syndicate's home city.
• Player starts off as a freelancer, and gets a computer interface where he can check job postings by syndicates or the government, purchase items, break into corporate computer systems, etc.
• Player has opportunities to run missions for syndicates. The missions could be done all in the computer interface, or they could be physical missions which require a drone body to complete.
• The drone body is a kidnapped citizen who's had a cybernetic control unit implanted in their brainstem, allowing people with the correct encryption code to control them remotely.
  • Drones can be hacked and stolen by other syndicates
  • Drone radio frequencies can be jammed
  • Syndicates with drone-detection technology can get early-warning that there are drones in the area (if your signals are not sophisticated enough)
• Players working for a syndicate can also kidnap people to turn into drones.
• Each syndicate which has a branch office in a city has a pool of drones in that city, which they would assign to freelance agents, or which could be used by whoever captured them (or purchased from other players if the player has none).
• Drones can have body upgrades, such as complete cyborg endoskeletal structure, enhanced reflexes and cognitive abilities, super strength and speed, etc.
• The more missions a player runs for a syndicate, the more 'favour' that player has with that particular syndicate. Once a certain level is reached, they can choose to join that syndicate.
• Once part of a syndicate, players can capture buildings in any city for the syndicate and control them, which allows them to reap a percentage of their profits (like mafia 'protection'), and resources they generate (i.e. power plant gives electricity and lets you control the power to different buildings, bank gives money laundering, research facility gives faster technology research, factories, mines, oil wells, etc.)
• Since small buildings are easy to capture, they're also easier for one syndicate to lose to another syndicate. This makes it harder for one syndicate to completely dominate and take over the entire map. The more buildings they control, the harder it is to hold them all.
• There should be about 5-10 syndicates in the game, for good balance. However, there is a larger organization called 'The Government', which will occasionally smack down on syndicates that are encroaching on their income too much, or breaking too many laws.
• The Government has Black Ops agents, who are basically the same as syndicate guys, but with smaller more badass weapons, and black suits/sunglasses.
• (Maybe: Players can be double-agents for multiple syndicates, or spies)
• Technology will be a major part of the game and will determine the power of each syndicate. Research can be done in weapons, more advanced cyborg modules, special offensive tools (jamming the satellite control-signal of another player's drone temporarily, which turns them back into a normal human who will act erratically -- can run away screaming, or start shooting everybody), sabotage tools, computer system infiltration technologies (cyberspace!!!), etc.
• Technologies will be expensive to develop and cost a lot of resources, but actually purchasing the items based on them will be cheap. The reason is so that when a player's upgraded drone dies, and they have to respawn in a fresh drone, it won't be hard to make them strong enough to use again. That means you get to do LOTS OF KILLING, instead of having characters that either die instantly, or are so powerful they never die.
• Accumulation of wealth is done by exploiting the businesses and people of the city.

  • All the buildings and people in the city are simulated entities, like SimCity.

  • There are many different kinds of business and house in the city, which provide different resources/attributes/powers to the syndicate. The syndicate can exploit these businesses for profit or their powers (similar to Chaos Overlords). They can also protect and nurture them, by protecting them from the government and other syndicates. The ghettoization of the neighbourhood is determined by the player's actions.

  • The city starts out bright and vibrant (or polluted and ghettolike, due to the government's or a previous player's exploitation)
• Missions will be either physical drone-based ones (kidnap a scientist, sabotage a building, assassinate somebody), or computer infiltration/intelligence gathering based ones (steal this technology from a company's database, steal information from database, sabotage computer system, break into crime database and get somebody arrested, hijack spy-satellite and take reconaissance of an area, jam/confuse a syndicate's control satellite over a specific city so that their drones are temporarily out of commission, etc.)

• (Maybe: A desperate player can sell their own body parts for money, and their person-in-front-of-the-computer will slowly lose limbs, eyes, kidneys, until they're just a head on a pedestal on life support with wires coming out of it, hooked into to the computer. Then, when other players look at this player's info, they'd see a webcam shot of just a head on life support! Later on, when they make some money back, they can buy cyborg replacements' but they won't be as good at making sweet sweet love with their clunky robot arms!)

• Eventually, if the syndicates get big enough, and work together, they can sieze control of the government through combined computer and physical espionage, and clever bribes. Then, the syndicate who takes it over will become the government, which is harder to control since they're so powerful, but has many extra cool things (ORBITAL LASER!!! BLACK OPS!!! STREET CLEANERS!).
• Syndicate members can post jobs for freelancers or other syndicate players if they want (they could either be a middle-man for a bigger job, where multiple tasks need to be completed, so they can make a profit off it, or they can make up new jobs so they could, say, take control of a large building that another syndicate controls.)
• There will be lots of AI citizens in the game, which belong to 'groups' of their own. For example, construction workers repairing a damaged building. If you kill them, they'll start coming after you -- trying to attack you, or actually hiring people to put a hits out on you.
• Being a hacker requires good security and defense. If your box gets rooted and infected with spyware, others can control you! Likewise, you can control other hackers' boxes.
• During missions, hackers must manipulate the police so their partners don't get caught. Cause confusion with phony emergency calls, etc.

Needed

• A cool story, with lots of sinister government subplots going on. Maybe the development of some brutal weapon that will eventually be unveiled and used on a syndicate (MOON LASER?!?! WEIRD-MATTER CASCADE WEAPON?!?! :D) They'll use it to blow up the largest syndicate in the game at one point, which will destabilize all the syndicates on that continent and cause other syndicates to start to take more notice of the government.
• An overall purpose to the game, so it's not all just anarchy and resource collection. (Story will help this)

Implementation Ideas

• In-game interface like Uplink
  • Looks like a futuristic suite of software for evil-empire management
  • Immerses the user into the game world by making them think it's happening in the current world
  • Hacker-missions (like uplink) can be run for fash cash or to help your syndicate (steal information, sabotage data (plant illegal info, destroy info), change criminal records,
• Resources acquired by controlling buildings in cities
  • Similar to Chaos Overlords
  • Syndicates can control buildings
    • how? influence device like persuadertron? cancerous spread from headquarters'? satellite headquarters, which are harder to defend?
• Different in-game tasks
  • hacker
  • resource manager and builder/reseracher
  • melee assault specialist
• Technology buying and selling

  • Technology is mostly information and plans, which should be able to be bought and sold -> people who research can make money by selling their findings.

  • It should also be easy to destroy technologies (i.e. if your files get hacked, you lose it!)

Too big?

This idea is too big. Perhaps a way of trimming down the scope is to try out all the different game ideas independently, and see which are the most fun, and only include those.

Each aspect of the game should also be litmus tested against this list of rules to create an MMORPG that will survive.

Backstory from the Original Syndicate Game

As the world's multinational corporations grew, their profits began to rival those of small countries. Soon they owned small countries and corporate influence was felt at the highest level of world government. Smaller corporations were swallowed up like plankton in the wake of three behemoth mega-corporations, one U.S.-based, one Europe-based and one based in the Far East. These became the only effective world government, unelected, undemocratic, but controlling the lives of the people through commerce.

Then the European corporation perfected the CHIP. Inserted in the neck, the CHIP stimulated the brain stem to alter your every perception of the outside world. Better than any drug, the CHIP gave hope to millions by numbing their senses to the misery and squalor around them. One CHIP would convince users that the sun shone and the birds sang even as they walked through the constant acid rain drizzle. Another that they were glamorous or handsome - they'd look in the mirror and see a different face - while the rest of the world would see them as they really were.

The CHIP was a technological revolution and sold countless units with the slogan "Why change your world when you can change your mind". It also left the user open to auto-suggestion and gave the corporations the perfect tool for manipulating the populace.

Like any new and potent drug, control of the CHIP meant control of the people. Soon the corporations were at war among themselves, desperate to monopolize CHIP manufacture. But the corporations' thirst for power left them open to infiltration.

With money earned through pirating CHIP technology, crime Syndicates bribed and murdered their way into corporation boardrooms. It wasn't long before the Syndicates became the controlling force all over the globe, with a finger in the pie of every transaction, criminal or otherwise, worldwide.

And in the crime Syndicates of tomorrow those in control don't need uzis for back up. Teams of custom-built cyborg agents hunt down rivals and traitors, and spread the influence of the Syndicates across the globe.

Hacking Games

• Codelink V2

• Hacker Evolution: Untold