'I've spent my entire career trying to recreate the feeling I had when I played D&D for the first time,' says immersive sim godfather Warren Spector, with new game Thick as Thieves going multiplayer because 'you don't play D&D alone'

As part of a larger interview and preview of OtherSide Entertainment's upcoming multiplayer sneaker Thick as Thieves with PC Gamer strategic director Evan Lahti, company co-founder and immersive sim OG Warren Spector explained some of the studio's reasoning for splicing the classically single-player genre into a live service PvPvE multiplayer game.

"For years, I've been thinking the next logical step [for immersive sims] was multiplayer," Spector said. "I've said this before: I've spent my entire career trying to recreate the feeling I had when I played D&D for the first time. Though there are solo adventures, typically, you don't play D&D alone."

"Tabletop role playing games are a group of friends telling stories with each other, telling stories together. So multiplayer was logical then, we had to do it. We've been kind of building towards that for a while."

I gotta say, as a crusty single player guy who doesn't usually go for live service, I find that angle pretty compelling. Spector also had further words for the live service-skeptical, speaking as one himself. "I initially resisted that⁠—I'm a story guy, I like games that you finish and move on to something else," he said. "But one of my designers said something that completely turned me around. He said, 'Warren, you know, this is just the D&D model.'

"So the other logical step is, let's make it even more like a tabletop game, and have an ongoing game that has a life beyond its initial release."

And we've seen a recent demonstration of how much of an appetite there is for multiplayer with immersive sim characteristics in Baldur's Gate 3. Though primarily a CRPG, BG3 had all of the open-ended, systemic, surprising interactions you'd expect of an immersive sim, leading to its neverending bounty of "did that really just happen?" moments like the Owlbear from the top rope. Even after decades of videogames' evolution as a medium, it feels like the dream of "tabletop roleplaying freedom and malleability with the immersion of a digital world" is something we've only just scratched the surface of.

Immersive sims' capacity for surprising, emergent stories is something the OtherSide team seems keen to emphasize in Thick as Thieves. "One of the other things that I love about immersive sims is surprise. I love it when players are clever and smart and use their wits and solve problems in unpredictable ways that surprise them⁠: 'Hey, that worked!' Or if they fail, they understand why they failed," Spector explained. "But where it really becomes magical⁠, to [Thick as Thieves project lead Greg LoPiccolo's] point, is when they surprise [the developers], when they do things that we didn't know were possible, which happens all the time in these games."

Given Thick as Thieves' game design pedigree, I'm almost not even worried that the multiplayer stealth experience will be everything Spector and his OtherSide colleagues LoPiccolo and lead designer David McDonough outlined to Evan. I think the real test will be maintaining the pace of support required for a live service game, and securing a confident, engaged playerbase to populate these multiplayer heists⁠—two factors that many single-player oriented developers have struggled with when making live service games.

An extremely encouraging sign for Thick as Thieves is that its live service structure is clearly downstream of OtherSides' game design ambitions, rather than the confused, seemingly half-willing efforts of games like Anthem, Redfall, or Suicide Squad. Thick as Thieves currently has no set release date, but you can wishlist it over on Steam or Epic.