Forza Horizon 5 creative director, five other playground staff start new studio to build ‘Premium Open World Games’
Six Playground Games employees, including 2021’s Forza Horizon 5 creative director, have left the studio to start their own studio.
The new studio is called Maverick Games, and the team there has been working on a “new high-end open-world game for consoles and PCs,” according to a source. Eurogamer report. This studio is not connected to the Microsoft Xbox studio umbrella.
Forza Horizon 5 creative director Mike Brown is leading Maverick and starring Tom Butcher, former Playground lead producer, new studio executive producer, former technical director Matt Craven, Maverick’s technical director and former technical art director Gareth Harwood, now content director. Harwood was joined in that position by Fraser Stachan, the former Playground sound director, and Ben Penrose, the former Playground art director.
Eurogamer reports that Maverick has secured “substantial seed funding” and is currently actively working on its new game, which will be the aforementioned open world game for consoles and PC.
“Our goal is for Maverick Games to be a studio that people will love,” Brown wrote in a press release, according to Eurogamer. “For players, we’ve worked on a quality game that’s incredibly fun, and for developers, we’re building a home where people are encouraged to take risks, be curious. , create, innovate, be yourself and above all – be a Maverick.”
Someone watched the latest Top Gun movie last summer.
EurogamerGoogle’s report seems to indicate that this won’t affect Playground Games’ ongoing Fable title, which is being developed by a team separate from the Forza Horizon team in the studio.
This is not the first studio reshuffle since the studio released Forza Horizon 5 in 2021. Last January, the director and co-founder of the Playground studio Gavin Raeburn reveals he’s leaving the company after 12 years.
While you wait to learn more about Maverick Games, read on Game Info Review Forza Horizon 5 and then find out why is it one of our 10 favorite Xbox Series X/S games to play right now.
[Source: Eurogamer]
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