// PC GAMER — GAMING
Dishonored director Harvey Smith thinks there's still room for big-budget immersive sims: 'When it really comes together and it has the budget behind it and the team, you end up with Deus Ex or Dishonored'
And now he's going to have to duke it out with Thief designer Randy Smith Evergreen.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.
Should immersive sims rein in their budgets? Thief designer Randy Smith Evergreen thinks so. We chatted to him last month, where he said a lot of immersive sims are in "an arms race to be bigger and better", but that the size of the audience and the competition from other big-budget games makes that a mistake.
His friend and fellow immersive sim designer, Harvey Smith, has a different take. Smith recently left Arkane, where he was the director of Dishonored and co-director of Redfall, to set up his own studio, Black Pony Immersive.
"I go to get coffee with Randy every now and then, and I'm overdue for that," Smith tells us. "He's a vegetarian, so sometimes we hit one of these hippy places where you can get a black bean burger or whatever. So next time I'm together with him, I'm just gonna berate him for this opinion."
He doesn't really disagree, though. Smith Evergreen's main point was that big budgets can become a noose, one which inflates publisher expectations and forces niche immersive sims to compete with games boasting mass market appeal. And Smith agrees, you have to "right-size your budget".
Where they differ is that Smith thinks you can make an immersive sim at any scale. "If you wanted it to be a really short, two-hour experience that just models your mom's house, you could do that. On the other hand, I feel like when it really comes together and it has the budget behind it and the team, you end up with Deus Ex or Dishonored or BioShock."
But he acknowledges the risks that come with designing a money guzzler. "The thing you can't do is get so conservative with your features—which often happens the more money you're spending—[that] you don't do the fun, creative, interesting parts of immersive sims."
The blockbuster game space is undeniably conservative at times. Just look at the disappointing Wolverine, which won't be coming to PC and is no great loss. The whole experience leads you by the nose, and all you get to do is bash a single button. This simplicity is bad enough in an action game; for an immersive sim, it would be fatal.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.