Overview
- Randy Smith Evergreen argues that modern immersive sims can be made on modest budgets of roughly $3–$10 million by using off‑the‑shelf assets and prioritizing systems and gameplay over ultra‑realistic graphics.
- Harvey Smith accepts smaller scales but says big budgets have produced landmark immersive sims like Deus Ex and Dishonored when design and team align, while warning large sums can also force conservative choices.
- Both designers converge on the need to right‑size scope, saying projects that are too small or too large risk losing the emergent interactions between AI, physics and player tools that define the genre.
- Coverage notes that industry consolidation and publisher expectations raise the stakes for big projects, and it cites Dishonored 2’s commercial shortfall and Arkane Austin’s post‑Redfall collapse as examples of those pressures.
- The debate rests on a long history: immersive sims value systemic design over visuals, the original Thief cost about $3 million, and recent middleware and indie success stories suggest smaller, well‑focused teams can still make notable games.