Historically known for its work on the Forza Horizon saga, but also for its role in the development of the next Fable, Playground Games will evolve considerably in the coming weeks since some studio veterans have just made an important announcement.
Several Playground Games executives found Maverick Games
Some of the pillars of Playground Games have actually just announced the creation of a brand new AAA studio named Maverick Games. The latter will also be based in England, in Leamington Spa, and it is Mike Brown, former creative director of Forza Horizon, who becomes the creative director and head of Maverick Games.
For the rest of the team, we find Harinder Sangha, the director of operations formerly co-director at Sumo Digital Leamington, but also Tom Butcher who becomes executive producer and who was main producer at Playground Games. Matt Craven becomes CTO after serving as CTO at Playground. Gareth Harwood becomes Content Director after serving as Technical Art Director for Playground. Finally, Fraser Strachan retains his status as audio director by moving to Maverick, Ben Penrose retains his position as artistic director he had at Playground and Elly Marshall becomes UX / UI director for Maverick after having been director of experience design at EA.
Suffice to say that this is a well-experienced team that has received significant funding to get started properly and work on a first AAA project in the open world. With only 10 employees at the moment, Maverick Games hopes to have 140 in its ranks soon. Mike Brown spoke in detail in an article from our colleagues at Gamesindustry.biz and said in particular:
“Our goal is to make Maverick Games a studio that people will love. For gamers, we’re already hard at work on an exciting, ultra-high quality title, and for developers, we’re building a home where everyone is encouraged to take risks, be curious, be creative, be innovative, to be himself, and above all – to be a Maverick. »
After releasing Forza Horizon 5 in November 2021, Playground Games is still expected at the turn with a second DLC as well as for the return of Fable, and it will still be necessary to see what impact this structuring will have on the current work of the Xbox studio.
