Traitors Gate is a 1999 graphic adventure game developed by Daydream Software. Set in a reproduction of the Tower of London, it follows the story of Raven, an American special agent trying to steal and replace the Crown Jewels of England to safeguard them from a rogue operative. The player assumes the role of Raven and solves puzzles within the Tower while evading the guards. Progression through the game is nonlinear and under a time limit: the player may solve certain challenges in multiple ways, but must win before 12 hours elapse.

Traitors Gate was conceived in 1996 by Daydream Software designer Nigel Papworth, who saw the Tower of London as a natural setting for a game. The team sought to replicate the structure with near-perfect accuracy and began by capturing over 5,000 reference photographs on location. Pre-rendering the game's panoramic environments challenged the team, which averaged seven members. The game took roughly three years to complete. Self-funded by Daydream after a successful initial public offering, Traitors Gate ultimately cost between $1 and $2 million, and by 2000 it was distributed in 10 languages and 27 countries by companies such as DreamCatcher Interactive and FX Interactive.

The game was a commercial success and became Daydream Software's highest-selling title by 2003, with sales between 300,000 and 400,000 units worldwide. Many of these sales derived from North America and Spain; it failed commercially in Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. Critical reception of Traitors Gate was "mixed or average", according to review aggregation site Metacritic. Its puzzles and recreation of the Tower of London were lauded by many critics—the latter was praised by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts—but the title's bugs, pacing, large interface and use of mazes drew mixed reactions. In 2003, Traitors Gate was followed by the sequel Traitors Gate 2: Cypher, directed by Papworth and developed by 258 Productions.

Gameplay and plot

Traitors Gate is a graphic adventure game that takes place from a first-person perspective in a pre-rendered visual environment. Using a point-and-click interface, the player explores a reproduction of the Tower of London and evades guards while solving puzzles, such as determining the combination to a safe by examining a coat of arms. In a manner that has been compared to Myst, player movement is restricted to jumps between panoramic static screens; the camera view can rotate freely on each screen. Traitors Gate features nonlinear progression: multiple solutions allow for roughly 1,200 unique pathways through the game. If the player does not win within the 12-hour limit, or is found by the guards, a game over results.

In Traitors Gate, the player takes the role of a special agent named Raven, employed by an American agency called ORPHIA. At the start of the game, Raven's superiors believe that another ORPHIA operative plans to steal the British Crown Jewels from the Tower of London. Raven is subsequently tasked with infiltrating the Tower, secretly swapping the real jewels with forgeries and escaping without leaving behind evidence. These forgeries are equipped with hidden tracking units. The game begins in a broom closet within the White Tower, where Raven hides during a building tour to await night. Controlling Raven, the player then exits the closet and infiltrates the Tower.

The player character is equipped with gear such as a crossbow, grappling hooks, lock picks, a motorized zip-line, explosives and tools to hijack security cameras. A PDA interface provides details about these gadgets, the Tower and other aspects of the mission. The player may also take photographs of the environment and message them to Raven's superiors, who send back facts about the objects in view. Traitors Gate features multiple endings based on the player's actions throughout the game. At the game's conclusion, after the Crown Jewels have been replaced, the President of the United States is informed that Raven's mission was a success.

Development Origins

Traitors Gate was conceived in November 1996, when designer Nigel Papworth of Sweden's Daydream Software began to explore possibilities for the company's next title after Safecracker. Coming across an article about the Tower of London in an issue of National Geographic, Papworth realized that the structure contained "everything a good game needed", including a cleanly circumscribed playing area and an obvious gameplay objective. He and the team subsequently developed a game concept that would take place inside an accurate reproduction of the Tower. Their plan was to capture "the feel of the weathered stonework and mixed architectural styles with as near to photographic quality as time and technology would allow", and they hoped to make a game that entertained players while informing them about the real-world Tower. The decision to make the protagonist an American agent came early, as the country's alliance with Britain precluded violent gameplay approaches by the player and shifted the focus to stealth and puzzle-solving. Inspiration for the plot derived from the film series Mission: Impossible and James Bond.

Daydream went public on the Stockholm Stock Exchange's Stockholm Börsinformation (SBI) list in January 1997, with the plan for Traitors Gate prepared. The company's goal was to increase its economic and decision-making freedom, and to secure the ability to select a publisher at the end of each game's development rather than at the beginning. President Jan Phersson-Broburg argued that self-funding Daydream's future games with money from Swedish investors—instead of opting for publisher financing "linked to specific projects"—would offer the developer more stability, flexibility and room for growth. According to Papworth, Traitors Gate was part of Daydream's roadmap for the future after going public. In its November 1996 prospectus, the company had told investors that a game with the working title "Project II" was under development, with an estimated 18-month production cycle and 7-10 million kr budget. There were four competing "Project II" designs at that time. For Daydream's public launch, roughly 20 million kr worth of shares, or 45.5% of the company, were offered to investors in Sweden. The initial public offering was a success. As a result of this influx of capital, all subsequent development of Traitors Gate was self-funded.

Daydream began Traitors Gate with around one year of research, starting with a trip of eight team members to the Tower of London to photograph the entire structure over two days. More than 5,000 images were captured during this trip. According to Daydream, employee Erik Phersson organized the results within "a series of indexed ring binders", on which the artists could base their work. Papworth later noted that, because the Tower of London held the copyright to photographs taken on its grounds, digitizing the team's images for use as texture maps was not an option. Instead, they used the pictures only for photo-referencing. Before full production of the game began, Papworth plotted its narrative in storyboard form, and Daydream planned the majority of Traitors Gates design on "a huge magnetic white board with a logic flow chart". According to lead programmer Peter Lundholm, HyperCard was used during pre-production to generate rough prototypes. In June 1997, Daydream reported that "Project II" was still in the prototyping stage and, pending a review of the finished prototype in August, would move into full production. This transition had been completed by September, and Daydream slated the result for 1998. By that time, the company had spent 1.85 million kr on the game.

Production

In January 1998, Daydream Software announced "Project II" as Traitors Gate and scheduled its public unveiling for the following month, at the Milia festival in Cannes. Employment agency Octagon Entertainment, with which Daydream had signed after buying back Safecrackers rights from GT Interactive in November 1997, was set to begin locating distribution partners for Traitors Gate in February. Finished contracts were not forecast until May. As with Safecracker, the strategy was to work with a different local distributor in each territory. Jan Phersson-Broberg reported interest from distributors after Milia, but reiterated to investors that no deals would be signed before May, when a playable game demo was planned to appear at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). While the game was initially set for a late-1998 launch, by June of that year the release had been pushed back to early 1999. Distribution agreements remained pending after the game's E3 presentation.

According to Nigel Papworth, development of Traitors Gate was "much more difficult" than originally expected, and a significantly greater challenge than Safecracker had been. The focus on reproducing the Tower of London left the team unable to alter the scope of the project, and forced Daydream to opt for realistic puzzles tied to the world, in comparison to the simpler task of designing Safecrackers more abstract puzzles. A nonlinear design approach was planned from the start, as Papworth noted that Daydream was "allergic" to linear gameplay, but this further increased the difficulty of Traitors Gates creation for the designers and programmers. The average team size was seven members throughout production, although other employees cycled in and out of the project as needed. Despite the focus on realism, the team modified sections of the Jewel House at the request of the Tower of London's management, who were concerned that the game's accuracy could pose a security risk for the building. The sewer system was also partly fictionalized, although influenced by real data and the actual positions of manhole covers.

Daydream elected to use pre-rendered graphics instead of real-time 3D visuals on Traitors Gate because the team preferred an "above-standard graphics environment to the advantage of free 3D motion", according to Papworth. The slow pace of the game was a contributing factor to this decision, as Papworth noted that the "loss of a little mobility" did not hinder the design. Animated cutscene transitions between screens were added to increase player immersion, in hopes of making up for the lack of free movement. For the character animation, instead of using motion capture, first-time character animators Fredrik Johnson and Leif Holm worked manually. Ultimately, the decision to use pre-rendering brought the game's final size before data compression to 10 terabytes. Papworth later said that the production methods used in Traitors Gate were seen at Daydream as "too costly and time consuming to be a viable long term solution" for the company, which led it, including members of the Traitors Gate team, to make the concurrently-developed Clusterball.

Five members of Daydream handled the creation of Traitors Gates models and textures. Modeling was initially delegated to Papworth, Holm, Johnson and Ulf Larsson. At roughly the 12-month mark, Papworth transitioned more fully into game design and writing, and his place on the modeling team was taken by Michael Nahal. The team began by drawing building plans on transparent vellum, based on information obtained from second-hand books, the Internet, the Royal Archives and Daydream's personal reference photographs. Working with Autodesk Maya and PowerAnimator 6.5, the team then created wire frames based on these plans, using four SGI O2 and SGI Indy computers. Textures were created in Painter, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, while the finished graphics were rendered on a farm of SGI Challenges and systems running Windows NT. Hardware upgrades were frequent during production. According to Papworth, the models and textures took two years of "60 hour weeks" to complete. The White Tower structure, delegated to Johnson, required nearly six months of labor by itself.