New Blood says 'immersive sim' is a terrible marketing term
New Blood Interactive’s Dave Oshry says “immersive sim” is useful fan shorthand but a poor first-line pitch for games such as Gloomwood and Fallen Aces.
New Blood Interactive CEO Dave Oshry says the label “immersive sim” may be useful to fans, but it is a poor way to sell a game to everyone else. In an interview with PC Gamer, Oshry argued that most players understand terms such as “RPG” or “stealth game” immediately, while “immersive sim” can sound like an unfamiliar kind of simulator.1
The argument matters to New Blood because the publisher has spent years making games associated with the label, including Gloomwood and Fallen Aces. Both are built around flexible first-person play, exploration and problem-solving, but Oshry said the company has found more straightforward descriptions easier to market. New Blood has grouped Gloomwood, Fallen Aces and Blood West as a “stealth trilogy”, rather than calling them an immersive-sim trilogy.1
Oshry also pointed to the danger of using a familiar comparison as an elevator pitch. He once described Gloomwood as “Thief with guns”, a phrase that quickly explains the premise but also creates expectations around how closely the game should resemble Thief. The game draws from several influences, including survival horror, rather than fitting neatly into one shorthand description.1
The wider problem is that “immersive sim” describes a design approach more than a simple genre. The label can cover games with systemic worlds, multiple solutions and meaningful player choice, but it does not tell a new player whether the game is an RPG, stealth game, horror title or action adventure. That makes it valuable as fan vocabulary and less useful as a first-line sales message.
Our opinion
Oshry’s point is persuasive, even if the label remains useful. “Immersive sim” tells experienced players that they should expect systems to interact and problems to have more than one answer. It does not, on its own, tell everyone else why they should care. The best marketing probably needs both layers: a plain-English promise that gets people through the door, followed by the more precise genre language that helps the right audience recognise the game.
That is not a rejection of the term. It is a reminder that categories are tools, not sales pitches. Gloomwood is available on Steam, where its official store presentation describes it as a stealth horror FPS set in a twisted Victorian city.2 That description gives newcomers a clearer starting point while leaving room for the systems-driven design that makes the immersive-sim label meaningful to existing fans.