At this year’s Game Developers Conference, OtherSide Entertainment cofounder and creative director Warren Spector told us why he thinks online multiplayer is the next big thing for developers making “immersive sim” games. It was an unusual prediction, as immersive sims rely on a game being able to account for a wide buffet of player choices in a game world. Adding more players to such an open environment in a game like OtherSide’s in-development project Thick as Thieves could be seen as risky.
At the time he said it had a lot to do with tabletop-style interactivity, where players work together to create a dynamic story, pushing and pulling at the world around them. He and Thick as Thieves game director Greg Piccolo (also OtherSide vice president of product) were jubilant about diving into “thief-versus-thief” game design—but they couldn’t share very much about what they were working on.
Now fresh off a reveal at The Game Awards, the pair, joined by lead designer David McDonough, could offer a bigger peek behind the curtain. They were eager to share the nuts-and-bolts of how they’re tackling the challenges of online “immersive sims”—all to satisfy players that they say “want to feel clever” while playing against each other.
Thick as Thieves‘ “shared quest” system drives its dynamism
Piccolo explained in our chat that Thick as Thieves‘ most exciting game mechanic had finally come together in the last few months: a centralizing objective system called a “shared quest.” In earlier versions of the game, players competed to steal multiple items in round-based gameplay. Those multiple items are still there, but now one shared objective that all players are hunting for binds the experience together.
The structure echoes that of the “extraction shooter” genre, where players enter a map to battle NPCs—and each other—to get out with the biggest prize possible. What makes Thick of Thieves different, Spector said, is that it’s a game about “competition, not defeating your opponents.”
“You’re not trying to necessarily beat up on the other the other players,” he said (noting that still may be a viable solution for some eager to ambush their foes). Using the lens of “competition” as a design pillar helped the team tackle the friction between stealth-friendly immersive sims and multiplayer games. Stealth games, he said, are usually games where players try not to interact with the environment or other characters. PvP games are all about interacting.
If you’re wondering why the idea of one major shared objective didn’t surface sooner in development, it’s because the production Thief of Thieves wasn’t so much about planning one high-stakes heist, but exploring avenues for keeping repeatable session-based multiplayer as refreshing as possible.
Piccolo said the Shared Quest system was a possible solution that OtherSide “knew about,” but was really “brought into sharper focus” as work progressed on something called the “clue system.”
The clue system is a randomized recreation of a beloved feature from immersive sim games like Thief, Dishonored, Deathloop, etc. It’s the means by which OtherSide scatters crumbs of knowledge throughout the game world that guide players to their target treasure. In a hands-off gameplay demo, the group explained these clues would change with every session so that players can’t just memorize the best or most reliable routes and locations. The video showed an OtherSide playtester scurrying through the sewers and happening on a notebook that boldly displayed the words “THE VAULT CODE IS…” followed by a number that unfortunately has scuttled out of this writer’s notes.
Immersive sims have toyed with this tech for a while, using random number generators to prevent players from skipping key bits of content by memorizing passwords (or, sometimes, they’ve kept the numbers the same to reward players who retain knowledge of the level). This system takes the concept up another notch, as Piccolo explained that clue in the sewer probably won’t be there every time players visit.
The clue system also acts as a kind of balancing tool to lower the gap between experienced and newer players. It’s one of many features in place to disincentivize players from brute-forcing the shared quest based on experience. “Knowledge is an accelerator for your progress,” Piccolo said, and confining the relevant knowledge to each run of Thick as Thieves reduces what friction players can eliminate by practicing run after run or watching YouTube videos.
Piccolo said there’s one fascinating challenge with the clue system that OtherSide is still working on. The clue in the notebook could be uncharitably described as “thuddingly obvious.” It doesn’t bury the passcode in with some in-game journal entry where a superior yells at a guard for not changing the vault code. “Lengthy exposition in a context where people are battling each other to get to a finish line was not welcome,” Piccolo observed, saying the version shown to press was a perfect example of developers getting a feature functional, then figuring out how to make it flavorful.
Game design is the real immersive sim
Prodding the OtherSide team about how the Shared Quest system could seem like an obvious feature seemed a bit unfair. But to students or industry newcomers it’s a fair question: how is it that core gameplay loop came so much later in production?
Spector stood up to the plate here, ready to knock down the idea that the mechanic could have been ready to implement on day one. “Documentation is stale the instant the the virtual ink dries on the virtual page,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how much you think about something or how clever and creative you are, you’re not going to think of everything, especially in this kind of game.”
It’s fascinating that Spector warned designers against overestimating their own cleverness while showing off a game meant to help players feel clever—but maybe that’s a key ingredient to making immersive sims. There can be cleverness in solving elaborate puzzles with fixed solutions, but the genre has built such a passionate cult fanbase because players grapple on to the unexpected and boundary-pushing solutions to problems ranging from breaking-and-entering to long-distance assassination.
Creating systems, letting players push the boundaries with them (or fail to do so, even if you know they can), is a design process that doesn’t mesh with immediately borrowing the core gameplay loops of popular titles. It’s risky and can burn far more development time. But if OtherSide’s bet pays off, Thick as Thieves will absolutely be a one-of-a-kind game that attracts players who thrill at stumbling into feeling like a genius—only to be one-upped by another player that stumbled into an equally brain-bending solution.
