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Prey and Redfall developer Arkane Austin became a casualty of a particularly brutal year of layoffs and studio closures, as one of four studios Microsoft closed down in May this year. Arkane founder Raphael Colantonio has said he was saddened by the closure–but he doesn’t think the studio’s unique brand of immersive sim is going anywhere.
“It’s sad, of course,” Colantonio said in an interview with PC Gamer. “I wanted to see our game going forever, for obvious reasons. But the company is [gone], but not the people. The people survive.”
The Arkane founder discussed the history of the company and the genre itself, pointing to Looking Glass Studios, which he described as “the originator of the immersive sim.” Despite shuttering in 2000, Looking Glass released a number of influential games including System Shock and Thief, and eventually inspired the founding of Arkane, which also employed a number of ex-Looking Glass developers.
Colantonio also pointed to Black Isle Studios, which closed in 2003, but carried on its legacy through its people. “You had Brian Fargo make his own company, you had Troika, you had Obsidian,” Colantonio said. “We still remember Black Isle as a great company in that genre, but then we still have their games.”
Arkane isn’t fully gone, of course, with the Lyon studio still in operation, but Colantonio himself has since moved on with his new project Wolfeye Studios, which released its first game Weird West in 2022.
“We’re doing more with Wolfeye,” Colantonio added. “The spirit of the immersive sim, I think sometimes that’s what you need–sometimes you need a renewal, you need a new impulse. And I think that’s going to spawn more little immersive sim companies. So while [the Arkane Austin closure] is a sad event, I don’t think it necessarily means that immersive sims are going to go away.”
Colantonio very recently teased more about Wolfeye’s next game, a retro-sci-fi RPG he says will make fans of Dishonored and Prey very happy.
