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'

Garret from Thief.

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.