Hell yeah. At a time when the video game industry could use some good news, former Arkane Austin head Harvey Smith and longtime collaborator Ben Horne have formed Black Pony Immersive, a studio focused on building narrative-rich first-person action RPGs. In other words: immersive sims. This is the genre Smith is known for, as the designer of the original Deus Ex and co-head of the Dishonored series.
Horne has worked with Smith for eight years, recently as production director of Redfall at Arkane Austin. Additionally, Redfall, Prey and Dishonored creative director Ricardo Bare is on board as design director of Black Pony Immersive. The new studio is staffed with veterans from Insomniac, Epic, Avalanche and Volition studios, and it’s based in Austin, Texas, with remote workers tagging in from across the United States.
The new studio announcement comes at an opportune time. It’s a tumultuous summer for the video game industry, led by a devastating round of layoffs and studio shakeups at Xbox in July. As part of the purge, Xbox is considering shutting down Arkane Studios and canceling the Blade game it was working on, though for now, that team’s fate remains in the hands of French authorities.
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