The fate of Arkane Studios is in limbo and the Dishonored franchise may be permanently on ice, but franchise co-creator Harvey Smith isn’t giving up on immersive sims. The veteran game director has founded a new studio focused on games that sound a whole lot like Dishonored.
“Today, veteran game developers Harvey Smith and Ben Horne revealed Black Pony Immersive, a new game studio built to design and develop imaginative first-person action-RPGs set within well-realized worlds, where players create their own memorable experiences with expressive, emergent gameplay systems,” the studio said in a press release.
That game description would be applicable to not only the Dishonored series, but also Prey and Deathloop, Arkane’s other acclaimed titles. Smith served as co-creative director and creative director, respectively, on Dishonored and Dishonored 2, while Horne had most recently worked at Arkane as production director on Redfall. As with Arkane Austin, the studio will be based in Austin, Texas. Arkane Lyon–the studio branch responsible for Deathloop–is still in operation.
“This group has worked together for years, decades in some cases, and is purpose-built to make the ambitious games we love–immersive sims,” said Horne, who will serve as COO and executive producer at the studio, in the release. “We share a vision for crafting games that push the limits of player immersion. We can’t wait to reveal more soon.”
Immersive sims like Dishonored, Deathloop, and their progenitors, Thief, the System Shock games, and Deus Ex, haven’t been particularly prevalent over the last several years, and Arkane’s last major project, Redfall, was a co-op-focused game rather than the single-player experience most fans of the sub-genre expect. Raphaël Colantonio, who co-directed the original Dishonored, left Arkane several years ago and co-founded WolfEye Studios. Its first game, Weird West, took the immersive-sim concept and applied it to a top-down Western experience. Its currently still-unnamed project will be a first-person action-RPG.
