Randy Smith Evergreen had been pitching the idea to publishers for a while. A nonviolent RPG, in tune with the values of the Looking Glass games he worked on in the '90s, about a young American woman searching for her missing uncle in Eastern Europe. But the publishers weren't biting. Often, they'd tell Smith Evergreen how much they loved the Thief games he'd helped create, and he'd wonder whether he ought to just be pitching a spiritual sequel to that seminal stealth series instead. Then, Microsoft came calling.
"I had an opportunity to work for a studio that's funded by Xbox, and this was at the lowest moment of our funding search when we were like, 'This might not happen, we might need to think about how to feed our families in some other way,'" he recalls. "I held on—and ultimately it worked out, and I got a funded project—in part because I felt hesitancy to work for a Microsoft-backed studio. I think the recent layoffs at Microsoft showed that there was some wisdom to that decision."
English (US)