Spycraft: How the most ambitious cult game of the ’90s got made

A former KGB Major General, and an ex-director at the CIA, collaborated in one of the most challenging video games of all time during the 1990s.

SpycraftThis is a full-motion, cult-hit video game. It was created by Ken Berris. Activision published it under the direction of Bobby Kotick. The game was released in 1996 after the Cold War ended. It tells the story of a spy who travels the world, disc-swapping from America to Russia and Tunisia.

“Without being too hyperbolic, it was the best FMV game of its era,” says FMV aficionado (and successful podcast star) Justin McElroy. SpycraftIt combines full-motion, pulpy cutscenes and puzzle-based gameplay. This combination is still very popular today.

Why has this been overlooked? And how did a video game — decades before the medium would be taken seriously as commercial art — bring together ex-CIA director William Colby, and former KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin?

Will Joel and Alden Peters. James Bareham

Clayton Ashley Senior Video Editor of Polygon and I have made our documentary for two years. The Making of Spycraft: The Great Game. We interviewed Berris — the director who “gave orders” to ex-spies. We spoke to Carl Colby, a film director who spent part of his career trying to make sense of his famous father’s actions. And we picked the brains of industry experts like McElroy and Christina Warren about the cultural moment this game launched into — an era too early to receive it.

Spycraft still resonates today. The world has changed over the two-years we spent with the project. This complicated tale was forced into the future.

Activision will be the first to launch in July 2021 Spycraft’s publisher, was sued by California’s Civil Rights Department. Six months later, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire the company, raising questions about Kotick’s longtime tenure as CEO coming to a close.

The second was that Russia invaded Ukraine on February 20, 2022. Vladimir Putin, a former colleague and subordinate of Oleg Kalutin, was the reason for Oleg’s departure from Russia. Both men are well-known for their dislike of each other. Though Kalugin has largely retreated from the public eye, he has spoken out against Putin before — and as a result, was prosecuted as a traitor.

Spycraft isn’t the story of Russia versus “the West.” It’s an amoral, but also strangely optimistic game. “It captures a particular moment, between the end of the Cold War and 9/11,” said the curator of Washington D.C.’s Spy Museum, Dr. Andrew Hammond. “These two superpowers that have faced off against each other, how are they going to relate to each other? What’s the dynamic going to be? And there was optimism, there was hope that they could be partners, they could work together more.”

This was an entirely different world to the one that we live in today. The Making of Spycraft: The Great GameA documentary of 50 minutes that tells the tale of Spycraft, its role in gaming history, and in the lives of the two titans of espionage who appeared it unforgettable — for the precious few who played it.

As Dr. Hammond, told us: “Quite often reality is actually much more wacky, and interesting than fiction.”

The Making of Spycraft: The Great Game The premiere will take place in 2023. Keep checking our YouTube Channel for additional updates. SpycraftIt is still available for play on Steam.