Here's some big industry news for a random Tuesday morning in January! A chunk of the Playground Games team that developed Forza Horizon over the last few years have left the studio, forming a new "AAA" team called Maverick Games.
Forza Horizon 5 creative director Mike Brown is heading up the project, alongside company COO Harinder Sangha. Sangha previously helped form two other UK-based development studios - Sega Hardlight and Sumo Leamington.
Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz, Brown detailed some of the reasons behind him leaving Playground to form a new studio:
"As much as I had an amazing journey at Playground, I was asking myself, what's next? Do I stick with this fun, good job? Or do I look for other opportunities? [...] This opportunity came up. I was asked what my vision would be for a new studio... and it was lucky I had an idea in mind."
That idea seems a rather ambitious one. While the studio is currently 10-employees strong, it intends to grow to 100+ in the near future, with the aim of creating award-winning titles.
"The team that we've got, the set-up that we've got, gives us confidence and security..."
"The game will be open world, it will be AAA, it will be premium, it will have the ambition to go on and win all the awards..."
The announcement of Maverick Games is putting a huge emphasis on the team's studio culture and its working environment. The philosophy here seems to be creativity above all else, with the studio head saying the team will "really encourage them [developers] to take creative risks".
What this all means for the future of Playground and its own projects is unclear. Of course, only a handful of developers are actually leaving the Xbox-owned studio so day-to-day development likely won't be affected too much. Still, 'Forza Horizon 6' could look different as a result of these top-level departures - Brown was the creative director on the last game after all.
What do you make of this news? Think it could affect FH6? Let us know your thoughts.
[source gamesindustry.biz]
Comments 13
Wishing them luck in their new endeavour.
And Playground games on replacing 6 key leads/directors/producers.
It's the first time I've heard/read the term "premium" game.
Imteresting news but we'll have to wait a while for anything.
Isn't Playground working on Fable currently? Going to be interesting to see how these departures affect that. Massive loss for Xbox for sure in losing all these leads.
I think it’s sort of brave when people leave a very good job with a good company.
I mean it could all go terribly wrong at a start up Company etc.
also who bank rolls these new small companies,
Equipment, people’s wages etc?
I mean they will have no income until the games is finished and hopefully sells.
Is this new studio still under the umbrella of Xbox, meaning it will still be producing Xbox exclusive games, @Kezelpaso? Or is it the case that it could/will be making a multi-form game?
@Fiendish-Beaver Maverick Games is an independent studio right now and is not under Xbox. We're not sure on platforms yet, we'd assume the plan is multi-platform unless they strike a deal somewhere along the line! This is all very early on right now.
It's a whole different ballgame when you don't have MS paying the bills.
Wish them all the luck, and honestly i wish there wasn’t exclusives. I know the importance of them and i get what they do for a platform. But i would love to play Last of us and God of War on my xbox with the Series controller. I know i could play some of those on PC, but thats not really my thing. Hope whatever these guys make they throw it on GP and PS5 so they can get their money back. But it would be a great world if one device played everything. I just don’t love the Sony controller, but i love some of their first party games.
Good for them. I like when this happens after an acquisition, it's the best of both worlds. Xbox gets a functioning studio without the work and time it takes to build one from scratch and the people with experience building a successful studio can try to build another one.
I'm immediately skeptical when a startup starts announcing "Premium AAA open world chasing all the awards." I'm additionally skeptical when they advertise "unique.....premium AAA open world encouraged to take risks." That's like selling bottles of dry water.
........with currently 10 employees..... Sure they're all high managerial types from Forza Horizon....but.... no matter how accomplished and polished and successful they are, 10 people used to working with Microsoft money on a formulaic racing game jumping to "premium AAA open world not racing game
" with 10 people and not Microsoft money..... Lots of people have doubts of the fully funded Playground making that jump with Fable let alone 10 staffers starting a new startup without the budget. I'd like to see them succeed, but I'll definitely have my doubts, and either way I imagine we'll still be talking about a rough E3 trailer on this 8 years from now for PS6/Series Z.
@Dezzy70 Venture capitalists expecting great returns and willing to write off the failures, plus banks with predatory interest rates especially in the current economy. It's absolutely a heck of a gamble, and I really am amazed that people really take that gamble today in an age when the big companies are now small and gobbled up by bigger oligopolies.
I think one of the saddest tales of such a thing is Curt Schilling, the famous baseball pitcher, who would have ever thought a top tier household name pro athlete would be a MMO/Everquest video game nerd...he even was a forum poster, anonymously....started a gaming company, the dev behind Kingdoms of Amalur. They were supposed to make a huge MMO in addition to KoA, they had R.A. Salvatore on the writing and everything, looked like a serious MMO contender. But EA did some dirty tricks on publishing KoA originally, game underperformed despite critical praise, pulled the contract, and left them in a debt hole that then caused them to default on a public business development state loan, Schilling spent his entire baseball fortune on trying to right the ship, but to no avail, it went down, and he left broke. In the end Embracer bought the IP on a fire sale, because of course, where they still sell the remaster on all platforms today. Decent game. Didn't age great but it's not bad.
The risk of these startups is so extreme.
It can go either one of two ways. It could be another Mighty Number 9 or it could end up like Koji Igarashi or Hidea Kojima.
Which ever way it goes definitely will mean a change for the Horizon series going forward.
@BRT15 I’m pretty sure that the people who left was from the Horizon team. So it shouldn’t have any affect on Fable.
I just wonder who is bank rolling their AAA game. You don't just come up with a few hundred million dollars to form a new studio and build a AAA game.
MS was really hush hush about their Playground games relationship at the beginning and Forza Horizon came out of no where. Maybe they are doing this again?
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...