Dishonored dev: Gamers aren't stupid

Harvey Smith, the veteran co-creative director at Dishonored developer Arkane, says players don't want the stripped back press-X-to-win offerings some publishers seem to believe they do.

"We say all the time that players are smarter than most publishers give them credit for. Players do not shy away from depth. They play games like Skyrim, like Fallout, in mass numbers," Smith told CVG.

"We've worked for publishers, without naming names, who were like 'we don't like first-person games. We don't think they sell'. And when an executive who controls your destiny says that to your face, what do you do? Half-Life? Halo? Call of Duty? Those are the biggest games in the world! What do you mean they don't sell? But how can you argue with them? If someone says to me RPG features are too nerdy they don't sell, what do you do?

"Then look at what Todd Howard does with the Elder Scrolls games or what they've done with the Fallout games. They're serious, interesting, complex, sprawling, fast games. Being simple is how we make lots of money, right? Well, maybe not.

"It's a sort of false belief that some publishers had ten years ago and it was hard to kill off. A lot of those publishers have died now, and we can make Dishonored. It's the game we've always wanted to make."

And having thrown out a decade of marketing-driven design values, it's a game that builds on and fulfils the promise of free, RPG-like first person games like Deus Ex, on which Smith served as lead designer, or System Shock and Thief.

"Old gamers like us wanted to play deep games back in the nineties, so that's what we worked on, but there's been a drought for a long time," fellow co-creative director Raphael Colantonio said.

"Before Fallout 3 or Bioshock there weren't many games of that style that were actually big hits. Now that those games shipped and made a lot of money, it's encouraging."

Encouraging enough that Arkane can knuckle down to a dream project.

"We really just want to do immersive first-person games that create a world and a new story, with some role-playing features, some stealth, and the ability to solve problems creatively or with improvisation," Smith said.

"Those are our values; they aren't the same values every studio has, (but) they've unified us and guided us and led us to make Dishonored."

Dishonored is due for release on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in mid 2012. It features freeform first-person gameplay with always-on AI resulting in unexpected emergent behaviours.