The stories of Square and Arkane Studios are very similar, although Dishonored didn’t become a particularly well-known franchise.

Harvey Smith, the former head of Arkane Austin, recently announced his new studio, Black Pony Immersive. As the name suggests, the studio will focus on developing immersive simulators in the tradition of Deus Ex and System Shock. But is such a move commercially viable? It turns out, however, that this isn’t the first time Smith has bet everything on an immersive simulator—and succeeded.

This is exactly what happened with Dishonored, the game that cemented Arkane’s reputation as the new guardian of the RPG niche genre. Smith revealed that Dishonored was an “all-or-nothing” project offering a way out of fruitless contract work for other developers. Despite a few promising projects, such as the canceled Half-Life 2 episode, Smith’s fears were realized. Ultimately, Arkane decided not to take on third-party projects just to stay afloat but to create what they wanted at all costs.

“People would tell us, “To keep the business alive, you better take some contracts. You need to work on whatever you can get.” And for a while, we tried that, even though it felt wrong. There was a time when Arkane was about to go under. I think we had only four months of funding left. We were working on Boom Blox with Electronic Arts. We were pitching to Ubisoft. A couple of our guys were working on a zombie shooter. We were farming people out left and right. We were working on nine projects at once. At some point, we realized this was not the way. We are here to do one specific thing. So, let’s focus on that and accept the consequences. Instead, the result was Dishonored, one of the biggest turnarounds of my career,” Smith said.

This experience reinforced Smith’s belief that the key to success in the gaming industry is creating what we’re passionate about. Accordingly, Black Pony Immersive has stated that it will not chase trends, which led to Arkane’s only real failure, Redfall, nor will it ignore the industry-wide fears that lead to an aversion to creative risk-taking.

Thanks to this, as well as to Gloomwood and Fallen Aces, which are currently in development by New Blood, and the untitled first-person RPG from WolfEye Studios (founded by Arkane co-founder Raphaël Colantonio), we may finally be able to move beyond what appears to be a failed phase in the lifecycle of immersive simulators. Why the comparison to Final Fantasy? It was Square’s last project based on their own vision, hence the word “final” in the title. After many setbacks, however, it ultimately became a success.

Source:PCGamer