Dishonored director Harvey Smith has revealed Black Pony Immersive, a new Austin-centered studio built around first-person action RPGs and emergent systems, but its first game remains unannounced.
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Black Pony Immersive is official, but the game is still hidden
Harvey Smith, the Dishonored director whose career includes Deus Ex, Dishonored, and Prey, has revealed Black Pony Immersive, a new studio focused on first-person action RPGs with emergent systems. The confirmed pitch, according to the studio announcement cited by Rock Paper Shotgun and GameSpot, is to make “imaginative first-person action RPGs set within well-realized worlds, where players create their own memorable experiences with expressive, emergent gameplay systems.”
That is the concrete news. The tension is what remains unsaid. Black Pony Immersive has not announced its first game, shown a trailer, named platforms, disclosed a publisher, given a release window, or shared pricing. Ben Horne, who is serving as COO and executive producer according to GameSpot, said the team “can’t wait to reveal more soon,” but the sources do not define how soon.
For players searching for a Harvey Smith new studio because they want the lineage of Dishonored, Deus Ex, Prey, and other choice driven games to continue, this is a meaningful signal rather than a product reveal. The studio is real. Its creative target is explicit. Its first game is still behind the curtain.
The confirmed creative brief sounds like an immersive sim studio, not a Dishonored sequel
Black Pony Immersive is being framed by its founders around the design values associated with immersive sims: first-person play, systemic interaction, player creativity, and dense world-building. Rock Paper Shotgun quotes the studio’s maxim as “through the looking glass, we’re chasing a dream of mystery, meaning, and creative play.” Horne describes the team as “purpose-built to make the ambitious games we love - immersive sims.”
Smith’s own statement, quoted by Rock Paper Shotgun, is more useful than any fan wish list. “My favorite gaming memories come from seeing players approach challenges with creativity, deep-diving into our world building,” he said. “We try to reward players for their curiosity and exploration. At our new studio, we're building exactly the kind of single-player games we're most passionate about.”
That confirms single-player ambitions and a design philosophy built around curiosity, exploration, and expressive systems. It does not confirm Dishonored 3, a stealth game, a supernatural setting, a specific combat model, or a return to any Bethesda-owned property. GameSpot notes that the studio’s description would fit Dishonored, Prey, and Deathloop, but that comparison is an interpretation of the language, not an announced connection.
The distinction matters for expectations. Dishonored’s audience is likely to hear “Harvey Smith,” “first-person action RPG,” and “immersive sims” and immediately imagine rooftop routes, systemic powers, stealth improvisation, and hostile spaces that can be bent out of shape. Black Pony has invited some of that reading by naming the genre directly. It has not promised the exact rhythm or fantasy of Arkane’s previous work.
Arkane’s unstable present gives the announcement sharper stakes
Black Pony Immersive arrives after a brutal period for the people and studios associated with this school of design. GamesIndustry.biz reports that Microsoft’s closure of Arkane Austin in May 2024 left 96 developers out of work, including Smith, who had been studio head. Rock Paper Shotgun also places the announcement in the shadow of Arkane Austin’s closure, noting the studio’s history with Prey 2017 and Redfall.
The status of Arkane Lyon is presented differently across the source material. GameSpot says Arkane Lyon, the branch responsible for Deathloop, is still in operation. Rock Paper Shotgun reports that, as of its writing, Arkane Lyon staff were negotiating the terms of their sale, closure, or buyout with Xbox. Those accounts are not the same, and the safest reading is that Black Pony’s reveal is happening while the wider Arkane legacy is unsettled rather than neatly resolved.
Smith’s comments to GamesIndustry.biz underline the human cost behind the announcement. “Ben and I chose the worst time in history [to start a game studio],” he said, describing the decision to launch amid a difficult business climate. Horne told the outlet they raised funds in “a really horrible environment for fundraising” and said they turned down deals that did not feel right, including approaches tied to “this NFT blockchain situation.”
That context changes the shape of the news. This is not a veteran designer announcing a boutique label in a calm market. It is an Arkane veteran trying to rebuild a team identity after a studio closure, during a period when funding is tight and the immersive sim audience is vocal but historically underserved.
The team is small, experienced, and deliberately preserved
GamesIndustry.biz reports that Black Pony opened its doors last August and now has a headcount of 26. Rock Paper Shotgun says the studio is based, or at least centralized, in Austin, Texas, with a wider workforce around the United States. GamesIndustry.biz adds that staff work remotely, that full-time employees are based in the United States, and that contractors and external developers support the studio from around the world.
Smith is joined by former Arkane colleague Ben Horne, according to GamesIndustry.biz. Rock Paper Shotgun also names Ricardo Bare among the former Arkane developers involved. GameSpot identifies Horne’s most recent Arkane role as production director on Redfall. Rock Paper Shotgun says Black Pony’s wider workforce includes people with experience at Insomniac, Epic, Avalanche, and Volition.
Smith told GamesIndustry.biz that one lesson from the Arkane Austin closure is the value of keeping teams together. “I don't think the people closing the studios understand yet what they've lost,” he said. He also pointed to minimizing top-down interference as part of the new company’s approach, saying, “We don't have to seek much approval from anyone else, and that makes us very nimble.”
For players, the important part is not only the names on the door. Immersive sims depend on a difficult overlap of level design, AI behavior, narrative consequence, combat tuning, and systems that survive player mischief. A team that has worked together for years, as Horne says this group has, gives Black Pony a better foundation for that kind of design than a studio assembled around a pitch deck alone. That is still potential, not proof. Until gameplay is shown, the team’s history is the strongest evidence available.
Independence gives Black Pony room to move, but also fewer visible safety nets
Smith’s comments to GamesIndustry.biz suggest Black Pony is being built as a response to the structures that can weigh on large studios. He cites the benefit of needing less approval, while also emphasizing health-care benefits for employees in the United States, “where that's not a given.” Horne’s fundraising comments point to another line the studio has already tried to hold: choosing deals that fit the company’s values rather than accepting any money available.
That independence has obvious appeal for choice driven games. Immersive sims often ask for expensive design work that is hard to market in a single screenshot: alternate routes, reactive spaces, systems that combine in unexpected ways, and levels that must still function when players refuse the obvious path. The confirmed Black Pony language points directly at those ambitions.
The risk is equally plain. The sources do not name a publisher, budget, engine, platform plan, or production schedule. A 26-person studio can be nimble, as Smith says, but scope is the central danger for any immersive sim studio. The genre’s promise is breadth: many tools, many routes, many consequences. The business reality for a new independent team is constraint.
That tension should shape expectations. The most exciting version of Black Pony’s first game may not be the largest one. It may be the one that chooses a sharp set of verbs, builds a world reactive enough to reward experimentation, and resists chasing the scale of a publisher-backed blockbuster. That is an interpretation based on the studio’s stated goals and size, not a confirmed design plan.
Players should watch for systems, scope, and platform details before committing
There is nothing for players to buy, wishlist, or preorder yet based on the provided sources. No release date has been announced. No platforms have been announced. No price has been announced. No PC requirements, console performance targets, access model, or upgrade path have been shared. The practical move is to treat Black Pony Immersive as a studio to watch rather than a game to plan around.
The first real test will be the reveal. A cinematic trailer would establish tone, but this audience will need to see how the studio defines “expressive” and “emergent” in play. Does the world react to stealth, violence, conversation, traversal, or faction choices? Are abilities and tools built to collide in surprising ways? Are levels arranged as authored set-pieces with multiple approaches, or as open spaces where systems drive the drama? Those are the questions Black Pony’s own announcement invites.
The wider landscape also sets expectations. GameSpot points to Raphaël Colantonio, Dishonored’s original co-director, leaving Arkane years ago and co-founding WolfEye Studios, whose Weird West applied immersive sim ideas to a top-down Western and whose current unnamed project is a first-person action RPG. Black Pony now adds another Arkane-linked effort aiming at players who miss dense, reactive games. That does not guarantee a revival of the genre, but it shows that several of its key designers are still pursuing the form outside Arkane.
For now, the confirmed story is clean but incomplete: a Dishonored director and Arkane veteran has started a new immersive sim studio, the team is building single-player first-person action RPGs around player creativity, and the first game has not been revealed. The space between those facts and fan expectation is where Black Pony Immersive will either earn its legend or cut expectations down to a more focused, playable shape.