"Arkane was about to go under" before it committed to Dishonored, former lead says: "We had 4 months of money left"
These days, Dishonored and Dishonored 2 are widely considered benchmark modern immersive sims, but it was also a crucial turning point for developer Arkane, we're now learning from industry veteran Harvey Smith.
Smith, who was lead game designer on the original Deus Ex and creative director on both Dishonored games, tells The Game Business there was a very real threat of full-blown studio closure before the studio collectively decided to refocus and commit to Dishonored. At the time, the studio was fractured into various teams working on different projects, some of which would never come to fruition, and according to Smith, there were only months of funding left before everything would've dried up.
"There was a point in time when Arkane was about to go under. I think we had four months of money left. We were working on [Wii puzzle game] Boom Blox with EA," says Smith, referring to a 2008 release from Danger Close and Amblin Entertainment.
"We were pitching to Ubisoft. We had a couple of guys on a zombie shooter. We were farming people out left and right. We were on nine projects at once. And at some point, we realized this is not the way. We are here to do a very specific thing, let's focus on that, and let's go under if that's what is going to happen. Instead, the result was Dishonored, which was one of the big turnarounds of my career."
A turnaround it was. Dishonored launched to universal acclaim and strong sales, launching a franchise that now includes several award-winning games including our 2021 game of the year, Deathloop. Of course, Smith lost his job when Microsoft shut down Arkane Austin in 2024, which kind of puts a damper on the whole thing. Thankfully, Smith along with fellow Arkane veteran Ben Horne have founded a new studio, the newly unveiled Black Pony Immersive, and are working on the exact sort of game fans of Dishonored would want from them.