The fall of the house of Xbox has been an agonizing display. With grueling rounds of layoffs, the massive company is still drifting in circles. What will emerge from this rubble are at least budding. Compulsion and Double Fine now have total control of their back catalogue, the latter already revving the engine for their next projects. While Arkane was not shelved in the latest round of layoffs, they’ve been a regular subject of torture of Microsoft. A new studio from former members promises to avoid repeating recent pitfalls.
Harvey Smith, Ben Horne and Ricardo Bare, former leads at Arkane Austin, announced the new studio Black Pony Immersive this week. In a comprehensive discussion with The Game Business, Smith and Horne discussed a return to the games that captivated their fans, such as Deus Ex and Dishonored. They also discussed the games that did not please their fans, namely the misguided Redfall.
“That was a difficult project,” says Smith. “Arkane is very specialized, but the industry is growing, and there’s always more mouths to feed. And it’s great when you can reach a wider audience. We got swept up in the games-as-a-service thing, and I had the foolish chutzpah to assume that it always works out for us.”
While an Arkane-made vampire killer seemed enthralling, enthusiasm dwindled when it became clear that Redfall was chasing trends. Smith and Horne say that parent company ZeniMax was channeling many of their projects towards live service. Between inexperience with the format, continued staff reductions and the COVID pandemic, it wasn’t the cleanest production in the studio’s history. Smith says it could have been even worse had Microsoft not allowed fired employees to continue working on a send off patch. Regardless of any hail mary passes, the game was in abysmal shape at launch. Arkane Austin was closed completely a year later in 2024.
“You know the old cliche, it’s about the journey,” says Smith. “Sometimes it’s about the golden ring. And you really want the golden ring. But sometimes it really is just about the experience of trying to do something really difficult together.”
It may seem like a tumultuous time to start anew, but trials by fire are not new to the Arkane vets. Even Dishonored, their crown jewel, was a tough ship to steer. Smith tells The Game Business that they only had a few month’s worth of cash left in the coffers during development, having pulled anchor from contractual supporting gigs like Boom Blox (which, worth mentioning, excellent game). And while beloved immersive sims are always a gamble in the industry, the public turning on live service games may have scrambled the usual odds.