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'

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' Immersive sims should get out of the AAA arms race. 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. "So you're talking about a $3-10 million budget, a passionate team led by some of us folks who have experience with immersive sims or newcomers who just played a lot of immersive sims and really get it, making something that's a little bit smaller, more passionate, and can be made more quickly." As he notes, the original Thief had a $3 million budget—but that was back in the '90s and would be $6 million in today's bucks. "So it's not clear to me that the $3 million dollar Thief or Deus Ex-style immersive sim that you want to make in the year 2026 is going to sell disproportionately different amounts of copies than the $250 million one that comes out of a big studio.