{"id":3199,"date":"2026-08-19T18:03:31","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T16:03:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.goranked.gg\/en\/news\/harvey-smith-launches-black-pony-immersive-austin\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T18:03:31","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T16:03:31","slug":"harvey-smith-launches-black-pony-immersive-austin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/goranked.gg\/en\/news\/harvey-smith-launches-black-pony-immersive-austin\/","title":{"rendered":"Harvey Smith launches Black Pony Immersive in Austin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Harvey Smith launched Black Pony Immersive in Austin, Texas, with longtime collaborator Ben Horne. Smith will serve as CEO and creative director; Horne will serve as chief operating officer and executive producer. The company said it will develop single-player, first-person action role-playing games that allow players to tackle challenges in multiple ways.<\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Smith described the studio&#8217;s aim as &#8220;make single-player first-person action RPGs set in these rich worlds where players are empowered to solve problems however they want.&#8221; <\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Smith and Horne worked together for eight years at Arkane Austin. Smith&#8217;s career includes work as lead game designer on Deus Ex and creative roles on Dishonored, Dishonored 2 and Redfall. Horne held production roles on the same team.<\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Arkane Austin closed in 2024 during a corporate restructuring at Xbox.<\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Black Pony&#8217;s team includes developers who worked on Deus Ex, Prey, Just Cause and Dishonored and includes staff from Insomniac, Epic, Avalanche and Volition. The studio is based in Austin and is recruiting developers across the United States.<\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Black Pony Immersive has not announced its first project or a release date.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Harvey Smith has launched Black Pony Immersive in Austin with collaborator Ben Horne. Smith is CEO and creative director; Horne is COO. The studio will build single-player first-person action RPGs that emphasize player choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_yoast_wpseo_opengraph-title":"","_yoast_wpseo_opengraph-description":"","_yoast_wpseo_twitter-title":"","_yoast_wpseo_twitter-description":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest"],"newsroom_tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Harvey Smith Launches Black Pony Immersive Studio in Austin<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Harvey Smith and Ben Horne launch Black Pony Immersive in Austin to build single-player first-person action RPGs emphasizing player choice; studio is hiring.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.goranked.gg\/en\/news\/harvey-smith-launches-black-pony-immersive-austin\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Harvey Smith Launches Black Pony Immersive Studio in Austin\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Harvey Smith and Ben Horne launch Black Pony Immersive in Austin to build single-player first-person action RPGs emphasizing player choice; studio is hiring.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/news.goranked.gg\/en\/news\/harvey-smith-launches-black-pony-immersive-austin\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Goranked\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-08-19T16:03:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Goranked Researcher\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Goranked Researcher\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Harvey Smith Launches Black Pony Immersive Studio in Austin","description":"Harvey Smith and Ben Horne launch Black Pony Immersive in Austin to build single-player first-person action RPGs emphasizing player choice; studio is hiring.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/news.goranked.gg\/en\/news\/harvey-smith-launches-black-pony-immersive-austin\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Harvey Smith Launches Black Pony Immersive Studio in Austin","og_description":"Harvey Smith and Ben Horne launch Black Pony Immersive in Austin to build single-player first-person action RPGs emphasizing player choice; studio is hiring.","og_url":"https:\/\/news.goranked.gg\/en\/news\/harvey-smith-launches-black-pony-immersive-austin\/","og_site_name":"Goranked","article_published_time":"2026-08-19T16:03:31+00:00","author":"Goranked Researcher","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Goranked Researcher","Est. reading time":"1 minute"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/news.goranked.gg\/en\/news\/harvey-smith-launches-black-pony-immersive-austin\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/news.goranked.gg\/en\/news\/harvey-smith-launches-black-pony-immersive-austin\/"},"author":{"name":"Goranked Researcher","@id":"https:\/\/news.goranked.gg\/en\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/6e18252c741e4de98bd82c0d24c0cec4"},"headline":"Harvey Smith launches Black Pony Immersive in Austin","datePublished":"2026-08-19T16:03:31+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/news.goranked.gg\/en\/news\/harvey-smith-launches-black-pony-immersive-austin\/"},"wordCount":188,"commentCount":0,"articleSection":["Latest Gaming News"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/news.goranked.gg\/en\/news\/harvey-smith-launches-black-pony-immersive-austin\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/news.goranked.gg\/en\/news\/harvey-smith-launches-black-pony-immersive-austin\/","url":"https:\/\/news.goranked.gg\/en\/news\/harvey-smith-launches-black-pony-immersive-austin\/","name":"Harvey Smith Launches Black Pony Immersive Studio in Austin","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/news.goranked.gg\/en\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2026-08-19T16:03:31+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/news.goranked.gg\/en\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/6e18252c741e4de98bd82c0d24c0cec4"},"description":"Harvey Smith and Ben Horne launch Black Pony Immersive in Austin to build single-player first-person action RPGs emphasizing player choice; 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