Dishonored Co-Creator Isn’t Giving Up On Immersive Sims, Founds New Studio

A New Home For The Genre That Smith Helped Define

Harvey Smith, best known as co-creative director on 2012’s Dishonored and creative director on Dishonored 2, has announced Black Pony Immersive, a new Austin-based studio built specifically around the immersive sim genre. He’s founding it alongside Ben Horne, who worked alongside Smith for more than eight years, most recently as production director on Redfall at Arkane Austin.

In the studio’s own words, Black Pony Immersive exists 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.”

Smith’s resume in the genre goes back further than Dishonored. He served as lead game designer on the original Deus Ex in 2000, worked on Thief: Deadly Shadows, and worked at Arkane Austin from 2008-2024, shaping the studio’s identity. The new team draws on that same lineage, including Smith’s frequent collaborator Ricardo Bare from the Prey and Deus Ex teams, alongside additional hires from Insomniac, Epic, Avalanche, and Volition.

The Worst Time In History To Start A Studio

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, he acknowledged the risk bluntly:

“Ben and I chose the worst time in history [to start a game studio]. Because, you know, what else are you going to do?”

That’s not an exaggeration. Immersive sims have struggled commercially for years despite strong critical reception; Arkane Austin was shut down by Microsoft in 2024 following Redfall’s poor launch, and Deus Ex co-creator Warren Spector announced his retirement from the industry just this week.

Horne framed the studio’s mission as a direct response to that landscape rather than in spite of it. “This group has worked together for years, decades in some cases, and is purpose-built to make the ambitious games we love, immersive sims,” he said in the studio’s press release. “We share a vision for crafting games that push the limits of player immersion. We can’t wait to reveal more soon.”

No Game Yet, But A Clear Identity

Black Pony Immersive hasn’t announced a debut project, and there’s no release window to speculate about yet. What’s already clear is the studio’s intent: unapologetically building the kind of first-person, systems-driven worlds that made Dishonored, Prey, and Deathloop stand out, at a moment when the genre’s biggest studio is in genuine limbo.

Smith isn’t the only Arkane co-founder betting on that formula either. Raphaël Colantonio, who left Arkane in 2017, has been building similar games at his own studio, WolfEye, suggesting the genre’s original architects still believe in it even as its future inside bigger publishers remains genuinely shaky.

For fans who’ve watched Arkane Lyon’s own future grow increasingly uncertain under Microsoft, Black Pony Immersive is at least a sign that the people who built the genre’s reputation in the first place aren’t done making the kind of games that earned it.