Arkane Studios' Harvey Smith commented on the Microsoft studio's closure last year, calling it a “shock” after a string of successes.
Smith was the lead designer on the original game. Deus Ex in 2000 before joining Arkane in 2008. After working as co-creative director on Disgracedhe worked on its sequel Prey and the studio's last ill-fated game. Redfall. the studio was closed by Microsoft in May last yearafter poor sales of Redfall.
“Every company makes decisions for the reason they make them,” Smith said at a news conference. Podcast “My Ideal Console”. “I don't often agree with them, but the biggest shock was that this studio made Dishonored with Lyon and then they made Prey. Then we worked on Redfall for a few years during the pandemic and everything else. An industry exploring games as a service… That's what it is. Creative endeavor is unpredictable.”
He continued, “It was a shock at first, but I actually felt for people who were new, it was their first project or they were new to the industry.”
Smith acknowledged his privilege in this situation given his years of experience and the ups and downs he had been through, but lamented the loss of junior staff due to studio closures and layoffs for whom developing the game had been an “amazing experience.”
“It was a shock,” he said. “I did not agree with this decision. I really believed in the future of the studio, we were working on something very cool.”
At least the studio was able to release update 1.4 for Redfall after announcing its closure, which Smith called a “huge update to the game.” “If we had started with that and then built on top of that, it might have been a different story,” he said, adding that the update allowed the team to get “so much closer” to the game's vision.
Smith also discussed the difficulty of getting feedback from players online, which may have led to Redfall and the studio's downfall, especially the “toxicity” on social media.
“I feel like it's even worse for video game developers,” he said, comparing the reaction to games to that of artists or musicians. “You release your game, it takes years, maybe it flops, maybe it's okay, maybe people hate it. Even if they like her, social media comes at you with a caustic, sour venom. And every time you release a game, it's always going to be like this, every time there's this vitriol, no matter what you do. Then you hope the number of people who like it will overwhelm it.”
Before Dishonored, Smith said he worked at Arkane on a couple of games that never saw the light of day. One of them was Blade Runner a game that would definitely suit him after Deus Ex.
“We worked on the Blade Runner game for a while, and I was really excited about it. What could we do with Blade Runner?,” he said before trailing off. Alas, we may never know.
After the release of Redfall Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer apologizes for failed launch. “We've let a lot of people down this week,” he said.
“Arcane's vampire thriller is twisted and deeply compromised, but it has moments of real charm,” our report said. Redfall Review.
