I suspect the multiplayer took a lot of inspiration from Thievery:UT, a total conversion / mod for Unreal Tournament that offers a multiplayer game inspired by

I suspect the multiplayer took a lot of inspiration from Thievery:UT, a total conversion / mod for Unreal Tournament that offers a multiplayer game inspired by the game Thief. One of the developers for Splinter Cell, in his spare time, helped out with the project and probably benefitted tremendously from all the multiplayer testing and balancing we did. At some point he asked all the team members for our real names and put us in some of the communications documents/emails in the actual game. It's really odd to see my name pop up in GameFAQs walkthroughs and such, and perhaps a bit depressing to know that it's what 'my name' is most famous for. But mostly fun. I never played the SC multiplayer, but Thievery:UT has been some of the most fun I've ever had multiplayer, more than all the UT, Quake, Age Of Empires, and whatnot.