Gloomwood Immersive Sim Debate Shows Why the Genre Label Still Fails

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Store links: Gloomwood on Steam

New Blood likes the design, not the sales pitch

New Blood Interactive CEO Dave Oshry has made the tension around Gloomwood unusually plain: according to comments he gave PC Gamer, quoted by Rock Paper Shotgun, he thinks "immersive sim" is a bad way to sell a game even when the game fits the label. "Is it a good marketing term? No. It sucks," Oshry told PC Gamer. "It's awful."

That is the concrete development here. The Gloomwood publisher is not arguing that the audience is wrong to see Gloomwood in the immersive sim lineage. Rock Paper Shotgun frames Gloomwood and Fallen Aces as immersive sims published by New Blood. VGTimes similarly reports that Oshry accepts the term has meaning for genre fans. His argument is about the gap between a specialist vocabulary and a storefront pitch. In his view, the players who already know the term do not need the explanation, while many others may misunderstand it or miss the game entirely.

For a niche built around Deus Ex, System Shock, Thief-shaped expectations, and player-authored solutions, that is a sharper problem than a simple genre squabble. Labels are strategy. They decide which audience sees the game, which comparison set players bring with them, and how much explanation a trailer, Steam page, or bundle name has to do before the game can start sounding fun.

The term reached the publisher through Gloomwood itself

Oshry's comments are striking because they are not coming from outside the scene. New Blood has published cult-favorite PC games including ULTRAKILL, as Rock Paper Shotgun notes, and its catalog includes Gloomwood and Fallen Aces. Yet Oshry said he first encountered the term "immersive sim" while working on Gloomwood, through lead developer Dillon Rogers.

Rock Paper Shotgun quotes Oshry recalling Rogers telling him, in effect, that games like Gloomwood had a name. Oshry's reaction was disbelief: "I have never heard that before in my life. What the fuck are you talking about?" The important detail is that Oshry was not unfamiliar with the games themselves. He knew Deus Ex. VGTimes reports that he also loved Thief and thought of it as a stealth game, while he thought of Deus Ex as an FPS-RPG.

That difference between knowing the games and knowing the category is the whole problem compressed into one anecdote. Immersive sim is a useful term inside enthusiast circles because it gathers a design tradition around systemic play, open-ended problem solving, and spaces that react to player choice. But it is weak as a first-contact phrase. To a player browsing quickly, it can sound like a simulation subgenre. To a fan who already knows the lineage, it may be redundant. Oshry's marketing position is blunt: the label carries high precision for a small group and low clarity for everyone else.

The Deus Ex and System Shock RPG argument has never gone away

Oshry's most provocative point is also the one that will irritate genre purists: he told PC Gamer, as quoted by Rock Paper Shotgun, that "System Shock and Deus Ex, they were RPGs. People called them RPGs." He continued, "You're immersed in this world. You're building your character. Yeah, that's called an RPG, brother. That's a roleplaying game."

That is not a neutral taxonomy, and Rock Paper Shotgun acknowledges the statement may be controversial among committed immersive sim fans. But it explains why the Deus Ex System Shock RPG debate keeps returning. The classic games often cited as pillars of immersive sim discussion also overlap with older, more broadly understood labels. Deus Ex can be described through role-playing, first-person shooting, stealth, and player choice. System Shock can sit near RPG, horror, and first-person design depending on which element a player or marketer wants to emphasize.

The tension is practical, not academic. Oshry argues that "if you market something as an RPG," it can do better than marketing it as an immersive sim, according to Rock Paper Shotgun. Rock Paper Shotgun's writer pushes back slightly, noting that RPG carries its own expectations, including stats and systems that are not always present in immersive sims. That pushback is useful because it shows the trade. "RPG" is legible, but it can overpromise progression structures. "Immersive sim" is precise to devotees, but opaque to outsiders.

For fans, the lesson is to treat the label as a signal rather than a contract. If someone says Gloomwood immersive sim, they are likely pointing at player agency, layered environments, stealth, and tool-driven problem solving. If New Blood says stealth or RPG is a better sales handle, the publisher is talking about audience reach and expectation management, not rewriting the game's design DNA.

Gloomwood shows the risk of comparison-based marketing

VGTimes reports that Oshry initially pitched Gloomwood as "Thief with guns." That phrase is efficient, and it immediately finds a classic stealth audience. It also creates a trap. According to VGTimes, Oshry said the comparison brought in Thief fans but also gave them specific expectations. He described Gloomwood as drawing from Thief, Call of Cthulhu, and Resident Evil rather than being a simple gun-focused take on Thief.

This is where the publisher's caution starts to look less like genre cynicism and more like portfolio management. A small phrase can optimize discovery while distorting the product. "Thief with guns" foregrounds stealth and heritage. "Immersive sim" foregrounds systemic lineage. "RPG" foregrounds character building and broader familiarity. None of those labels, based on the reported comments, captures the whole pitch New Blood wants for Gloomwood.

The same issue applies to Fallen Aces and Blood West in New Blood's catalog. VGTimes reports that New Blood now groups Gloomwood, Fallen Aces, and Blood West on Steam as "the stealth trilogy." Oshry's view, as reported by VGTimes, is that stealth helps attract players, while calling the bundle an "immersive sim trilogy" would not sell as well.

That naming choice is a small storefront signal with larger implications. New Blood is effectively choosing the widest accurate entry point, then letting individual games reveal their complexity after the click. From a strategy angle, that is a sensible funnel. The first label needs to earn attention. The second layer can teach the player why the game has deeper systems.

Arkane's Prey remains the cautionary comparison

VGTimes connects Oshry's comments to a familiar industry example: Arkane's Prey. According to VGTimes, Arkane spent time during Prey's development explaining the immersive sim label to its intended audience, and Bethesda was disappointed with the game's sales. The source material does not provide Bethesda's figures or a direct causal link between terminology and sales, so that connection should be handled carefully. What is supported is narrower: VGTimes presents Prey as an example of the marketing difficulty around the term.

That distinction matters because immersive sim fans often read commercial disappointment as proof that the market undervalues complex design. Oshry's argument points at a less romantic explanation. If a term requires a lecture before it works, it may be a poor first-line marketing asset, even if it remains the best critical shorthand after release.

This also explains why developers and publishers keep wrestling with immersive sim meaning. The term describes how a game behaves once you are inside it. Marketing often needs to describe why you should enter in the first place. Those are different jobs. One is about systems, possibility spaces, and player expression. The other is about instant comprehension in a crowded storefront. When the same phrase has to do both, it fails at one of them.

How fans should read genre labels around Gloomwood now

For Deus Ex, System Shock, Thief, and Gloomwood fans, the useful takeaway is not that one label has won. The supported reporting shows a publisher trying to balance accuracy against reach. Rock Paper Shotgun reports Oshry's view that immersive sim is a poor marketing term. VGTimes reports that he sees broader labels like stealth and RPG as more useful for discovery, while also noting that genre fans understand the term.

That gives players a practical way to evaluate games in this space. If you already know what immersive sim means, keep using it as a filter, but do not expect every developer or publisher to lead with it. Look for surrounding clues: stealth framing, first-person problem solving, references to Thief or Deus Ex, environmental routes, survival or horror influences, and how the developer describes player choice. The absence of the phrase on a storefront does not mean the design is absent. The presence of the phrase does not guarantee the exact mix of stats, stealth, combat, and simulation you associate with a favorite classic.

For Gloomwood specifically, the current conversation suggests New Blood wants the audience to arrive through clearer doors. Stealth is one of them. RPG comparison is another, at least as Oshry frames the Deus Ex and System Shock heritage. Immersive sim remains the enthusiast's map once you are inside. The unresolved question is whether the genre can ever become a mainstream sales term, or whether it will remain what it has often been: a precise phrase for players who already know they are looking for it.