Psygnosis Limited (; known as SCE Studio Liverpool or simply Studio Liverpool from 1999) was a British video game developer and publisher headquartered at Wavertree Technology Park in Liverpool. Founded in 1984 by Ian Hetherington, Jonathan Ellis, and David Lawson, the company initially became known for well-received games on the Atari ST and Amiga. In 1993, it became a wholly owned subsidiary and first-party developer of Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) and began developing games for the original PlayStation. It later became a part of SCE Worldwide Studios. The company was the oldest and second largest development house within the company. The company is best known for creating the Wipeout, Formula One and Colony Wars series.
Reports of Studio Liverpool's closure surfaced on 22 August 2012, with Edge quoting staff tweets. Staff members were told the news by Michael Denny, vice president of Sony Worldwide Studios Europe. Sony said that the Liverpool site would remain in operation, as it was still home to many Sony Departments. At the time of its closure, it employed roughly 100 people comprising two development teams. Mick Hocking oversaw Studio Liverpool's operations as its last Group Studio Director, a position he continued to hold within Evolution Studios.
Psygnosis still exists as a legal entity under Sony and continues to make legal filings, but has had no developers since 2012. In December 2021, Sony renewed Psygnosis' logo and trademarks despite not using the Psygnosis branding since 2000, though this is thought to be standard filing practice as trademarks last for a decade in the United States and Sony had previously filed renewal applications in 2011 as well.
History
Early years Psygnosis was the eventual successor of the defunct 8-bit software house Imagine Software, where Lawson was one of the founders and Hetherington was financial director. Finchspeed, a company created by the directors, attempted to acquire the assets of the failing company but this was unsuccessful and the remains of Imagine, including its much-hyped but never completed "megagames", were sold by the receivers. While the name and trademarks were bought by Ocean Software, Sinclair Research paid a rumoured £100,000 for the rights to Bandersnatch and contracted a new company set up by Hetherington and Lawson, Fire Iron, to produce the game for the Sinclair QL for release in early 1985.
Sinclair withdrew funding from Fire Iron in early 1985, and Psygnosis, which became a limited company under United Kingdom company law in July 1985, revealed its first title Brataccas, which featured many of the concepts originally intended for Bandersnatch, at the 1985 Personal Computer World show in September.
The name of another Imagine Megagame (the proposed but never developed Psyclapse) was later used by Psygnosis as an alternative label for some of its releases, such as Ballistix and Captain Fizz Meets The Blaster-Trons.
The box artwork was very distinctive with a black background and fantasy artwork by Roger Dean bordered in red. This style was maintained for the better part of 10 years. For the next few years, Psygnosis' releases contained increasingly improved graphics, but were marred by similarly difficult gameplay and control methods. The original company headquarters were located at the Port of Liverpool Building at the Pier Head in Liverpool, but soon moved to Century Buildings in Liverpool's Brunswick Business Park, and later moved down the road to South Harrington Building by the docks. In its early years, the company's US operations had its titles distributed by Mindscape, before self-distributing its games in North America, initially located in Addison and later relocated to Cambridge.
Although Psygnosis primarily became a game publisher, some games were developed fully or partly in-house. During the early days, artists were employed full-time at the headquarters, offering third-party developers, who were often just single programmers, a high-quality art resource. This allowed Psygnosis to maintain high graphical standards across the board. The original artists were Garvan Corbett, Jeff Bramfitt, Colin Rushby and Jim Bowers, with Neil Thompson joining a little later.
Obliterator, released in 1988, contained an opening animation by Jim Bowers. This short scene would pave the way for increasingly sophisticated intro animations, starting with 2D hand drawn sequences, and progressing into FMV and 3D rendered movies created with Sculpt 4D on the Amiga. Eventually, Psygnosis would buy Silicon Graphics workstations for the sole purpose of creating these animations.
While many game companies in the mid-to-late 1980s released similar versions of titles for both the Amiga and Atari ST, Psygnosis increasingly developed games that made greater use of the Amiga's hardware capabilities. Shadow of the Beast, released in 1989, became one of the company's most successful titles and was noted for its multi-layered parallax scrolling and music. The game was also used to demonstrate the Amiga's capabilities in computer shops.
More employees were hired. In 1988, John White became the head of software at the studio. In 1989, Nick Burcombe joined the company, elevating to the role as the head of game design. Tim Wright begin working as a freelancer before being a studio sound design head from 1994 to 1998.
Psygnosis consolidated its fame after publishing the DMA Design Lemmings game franchise: debuting in 1991 on the Amiga, Lemmings was ported to a plethora of different computer and video game platforms, generating many sequels and variations of its concept through the years. Also in 1991, the company partnered with Electronic Arts to market its games for Sega Genesis, before self-publishing Sega Genesis games starting in early 1993. Microcosm, a game that appeared on the FM Towns, Amiga CD32, and 3DO furthered the company's reputation for games with excellent graphics.
Psygnosis also created the "Face-Off" games in the Nickelodeon 1992 television game show, Nick Arcade, such as "Post Haste", "Jet Jocks" and "Battle of the Bands".
Sale to Sony and expansion In 1993 the company was acquired by Sony Electronic Publishing (which later folded into Sony Computer Entertainment). The acquisition cost Sony £20 million. In preparation for the September 1995 introduction of Sony's PlayStation console in Western markets, Psygnosis started creating games using the PlayStation as primary reference hardware. Among the most famous creations of this period were Wipeout, G-Police, and the Colony Wars series, some of which were ported to PC and to other platforms. The PlayStation marked a turning point in Psygnosis's game design, moving away from the prerendered graphics and limited gameplay that the company had become associated with. This was a successful period for the company; in the 1995–96 financial year, Psygnosis games accounted for 40% of all video games sales in Europe. The company Sony Psygnosis was once renamed to Sony Interactive Europe on August 17, 1995, but did not last long.
The acquisition was rewarding for Sony in another aspect: development kits for PlayStation consoles. As it had previously published PSY-Q development kits for various consoles by SN Systems, Psygnosis arranged for it to create a development system for the PS based on cheap PC hardware. Sony evaluated the system during CES in January 1994 and decided to adopt it.
As Psygnosis expanded after the Sony buyout, another satellite office was opened in Century Building with later offices opening in Stroud, London (started development in 1993, second studio in 1996, evoled into Camden), Chester (started development in 1996), Paris (started development in 1994), Germany, Manchester (started development in 1996), Leeds (started development in 1996) and Foster City in California (as the Customer Support & Marketing with software development done in San Francisco, who started operations in 1997), now the home of Sony Computer Entertainment America. Soon after Sony took over, its offices in the US moved from Cambridge to Foster City in 1995 ahead of the launch of PlayStation. The company headquarters has resided at Wavertree Technology Park since 1995.
The original London studio was started in 1993 and it was headed by a set of developers namely Anthony Taglione (credited as TAG), Stuart Sargassion, Richard Weeks and Peter Marshall, among others. It was known for Bram Stoker's Dracula, Microcosm, MegaMorph, the aborted CD32 version of Novastorm, Hexx: Heresy of the Wizard and Alpha Storm, before evolving into the Camden studio with the development of Blast Radius.
The Stroud studio was opened in November 1993 in order to attract disgruntled MicroProse employees. Staff grew from initially about 50 to about 70 in 1997. Among the titles created at Stroud are Assault Rigs, Overboard!, the PlayStation version of Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors, Nations Fighter Command, and G-Police and its sequel G-Police: Weapons of Justice. The Wheelhouse—its publishing name—was closed in 2000 as part of the Sony Computer Entertainment takeover of Psygnosis. Some members joined Bristol-based Rage Software, but faced a similar demise a number of years later.
The Leeds studio was opened in 1996, and it housed a lot of development staff. Some of the games the Leeds studio worked on were Global Domination, Retro Force, Wip3out, Colony Wars: Red Sun and Lemmings Revolution, before the Leeds studio shuttered in 2001. The Chester operation worked on its only title Sentient, before closing down shortly. The Manchester operation was led by Haydn Dalton, and lasted for a short time between 1996 and 1998 with The Contract being one of the titles they were developing before layoffs hit, with the last game they worked on, Lander, went released.
The Paris operation started developing in 1994 under the pen F.D.I with Adidas Power Soccer, Adidas Power Soccer International 97, The City of Lost Children and O.D.T. being the games developed in the Paris studio before being sold in 1999 to Infogrames. The San Francisco operation started in 1997, and worked on the unreleased titles Godzilla Wars, Galleons Over Mars, Control Freak, Goblins, Real Wars and Reapers, and supported development on Destruction Derby 64, Drakan: Order of the Flame, and Metal Fatigue, before being shut down in 1999.
The PC business was eventually merged with the PC unit of Sony Imagesoft on August 17, 1995 and became Sony Interactive PC Software America, which was operating as a unit of Sony Interactive Entertainment, however the merger was undone in late 1996, with PC titles now being distributed by Sony Interactive Studios America and Psygnosis.Sony Electronic Publishing Co. renamed; Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc. is established. Business Wire, August 17, 1995.
Despite being owned by Sony, Psygnosis retained a degree of independence from its parent company during this period and continued to develop and publish titles for other platforms, including the Sega Saturn and the Nintendo 64. The company hired Perfect Entertainment to port its PlayStation output to the Sega Saturn. This caused friction between Psygnosis and Sony, and in 1996 Sony engaged SBC Warburg's services in finding a buyer for Psygnosis. However, though bids reportedly went as high as $300 million (more than ten times what Sony paid for the company just three years before), after six months Sony rescinded its decision to sell Psygnosis. Relations between the two companies had improved during this time, and Sony became reconciled to Psygnosis releasing games for competing platforms. Shortly after, Psygnosis took over sales, marketing and distribution of its own titles, a task that Sony had been handling following the buyout.