Deus Ex (like Thief) is a classic example of a genre called "immersive sim" or "systemic game". Basically games with an unusually high environmental/NPC interactivity. Not many of these games have ever been made. Apparently they don't sell so well. Cyberpunk 2077 is just a fairly normal RPG, so you can't really compare them.
Having high detail vertical slices of worlds is not an imperative in immersive sim games, but practicality often dictates it.
There's a lot of arguing about what constitutes an immersive sim (i.e. NPC interactivity is not one), but the two common concise definitions are "if you can open a door in several inventive ways (including bypassing it) and more generally, if you have so many complex systems in a game that they interact in unexpected ways. Purists also require first-person perspective, but others would also count Hitman or EVE Online.
There are also "sandboxy" games like the open world Zelda, with a chemistry/physics system and multiple-solution puzzles, but wouldn't quite fit the prototypical immersive sim, as there is
still fairly limited NPC interaction. Maybe those count just as systemic games in the wider sense.
I asked Spector about his 'immersive simulations' comment some years back:
"I just prefer games that are less puzzle oriented or "single-solution" oriented and games that offer deeper simulations. Simulations allow players to explore not just a space but a "possibility space." They can make their own fun... tell their own stories... solve problems the way they want and see the consequences of their choices."
Maybe precursors to todays sandbox game environments then.
I never really got how I.mersove Sims fail to capture a market considering the sheer number of people that enjoy similarly detailed SciFi/fantasy work.
Everything got more expensive. They pumped out Deus Ex in under 2 years with a staff of less than a hundred FTE.
As a child I was ecstatic when I learned the gaming industry had eclipsed the movie industry. Now I know what that meant: we went from Reservoir dogs to Marvel Endgame.
They're very expensive games to make and the audience is comparatively small. The audience might also just be hard to capture since it's not too easy to explain an immersive sim and the appeal to someone.
Another problem is that people absolutely love large open world games. Which can't really be combined with a meticulously designed immersive sim. So designers have not much choice if they want to sell things.
Perhaps immersive sims would need one real block buster to make the genre more widely known? (Similar to Elder Scrolls 3 or GTA 3 for open world games, Dark Souls for Soulsborne games, Super Metroid for Metroidvanias, etc.) There wasn't ever a real immersive sim blockbuster.
Or maybe it's just not for the masses. Like point-and-click adventures.
I love games that try to find the right set of compromises to have their cake and eat it, too, in terms of combining open world feel with linear, tight narrative and deeply simulated environments.
To me Gothic was one of the milestones: One of the first large 3D open world RPGs that had a chapter structure. As you progressed the main quest line, you would eventually cross chapter boundaries that would toggle major changes in the game world, e.g. whether a given city was in front of or behind the frontlines of a conflict, altering massively who you would find there or what it looked like. While some side quest opportunities would persist over the chapter boundary, other doors would close and new ones would open. All of this did a lot to feel like the game world was meaningfully progressing alongside you, and to show the impact of your own actions on the game world.
As for Deus Ex, even the original had these "hub" locations like Hell's Kitchen, maps you'd return to more than once, in different circumstances, while also taking you all over the world to mission locations. A lot of missions had "establishing locations" where you'd e.g. walk around in a new city a bit before breaking into a corporate HQ found within it. This gave you just enough freedom to make it feel like more than a linear corridor shooter with sim elements, while in reality being planned out and guided enough you had your narrative arcs and peaks. The sequels of course expanded on this with Detroit, Prague, etc.
There's fantastic game design artistry in blending and balancing these concerns. With DX, people usually comment on the sim elements, emergent gameplay, multiple approaches to mission goals, etc., but its story and map structure is IMHO another thing that made that game so groundbreaking and memorable. The immersive sim it got from Ultima Underworld and System Shock, but this careful orchestration of alternating linear and more free-form stretches, of having character arcs, of circling back on itself and revisiting locations, of having narrative beats was new to 3D/FPS games and showed the way.
I have vivid memory of walking into the HQ of the first DX, it was my first experience of an FPS safe zone/hub area. Something felt very freeing about it, and now in later life I realized that it was being given full agency in a game. No constant combat or objective. From a hub you have the agency and breathing room to wander and explore the world building, and a good immersive sim gives you lots to find and do while you wander.
Another great example of the genre (although very different setting) was Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Very detailed medieval world (that felt quite historically accurate) and lots of different ways to solve problems.
Can you explain how this would be a "tragedy of the commons"? I'm not sure I understand how there's a limited resource which each individual is incentivized to extract more than their sustainable share of.
Guessing they mean something more like "lowest common denominator". An otherwise good game without this complexity between systems/AI will sell just as well and cost much less to make.
