Thief designer says that the immersive sim audience is too small for AAA games: 'There's quite a few of us who think the way to do it is be III or AA'

Randy Smith Evergreen knows his immersive sims. As a designer on Thief: The Dark Project, he was there in the early days of the genre, and his credits include System Shock 2 and Dark Messiah: Might and Magic, as well as Thief 2 and Thief: Deadly Shadows. And he's pretty sure the genre is a bad fit for the AAA arms race.

"Myself and other folks who have worked extensively on immersive sims have a belief that the immersive sims that are being created today and are slated for the future are, by and large, thinking of themselves as [existing] in an arms race to be bigger and better," he tells us.

And this has been happening for a while. Just think about how Deus Ex: Mankind Divided pushed things in terms of fidelity. Or how big and expensive Arkane's modern offerings have been. They aren't competing with other immersive sims, they're competing with blockbuster shooters and vast open-world games from the biggest studios out there.

"Like, you just have to put more money into them, make a bigger and bigger immersive sim. It's got to be AAA, and it's got to sit right alongside Ghost of Tsushima and...