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Leamington Spa based studio Playground Games, the team behind the successful Forza Horizon series, is to set up a second studio to work on a brand new game, reports GamesIndustry.
The second team will also be based in Leamington Spa, “ideally within walking distance” of the first office, and will work on a new open world game title, but not in the racing genre.
“Opening another studio is something we’ve been talking about for a good few years, but we’ve been keen not to rush into it,” founder and creative director Ralph Fulton told GamesIndustry.biz. “It’s a great opportunity for us to test ourselves in a different genre.
“We feel like we’ve become pretty good at racing games over the years. We can always get better, we can always strive to get better but we’d love to prove ourselves in a different genre. That’s another goal of Project 2, to allow us to do that. We’re going to need to hire some very talented people with experience that we don’t have.”
Fulton explained that some of the talented staff who have “grown up” making the Forza Horizon titles will have the opportunity to progress their careers at the new studio.
“I remember many of them starting green as you like,” said Fulton. “They’ve grown up in this studio, grown in experience over three games of increasing quality, and are now in a position where they are looking to develop their careers. We want them to do that here rather than somewhere else, but with only one team the opportunities for that are limited.”
Fans of the Forza Horizon games needn’t be concerned that Playground Games will be abandoning the racing genre.
“Our business with Forza over the last six, seven years has been great for us,” added Fulton. “It remains the cornerstone of our business – we’re not running away from racing, we still feel passionate about making new racing games and delivering new experiences for our players.
“Horizon 3 was a watershed game for us – it’s certainly our best-reviewed game critically, it’s our most commercially successful game as well. It’s the first time we’ve experienced that commercial breakout hit phenomenon – the other games have been successful but not on the level of this one. We want to keep doing that. In a way, that game took six years to make. So we want to keep developing that skillset and pushing new boundaries.”
Source: GamesIndustry
