Playground’s goal is to become ‘the best racing studio in the world’

Forza Horizon 2 developer Playground Games has ambitions to “become the best racing studio in the world,” according to creative director Ralph Fulton, who is thankful to Microsoft for offering the studio the opportunity to work on Forza.

“We’re a relatively young company. We’ve been going 4 and a half years. Next January/March time will be our fifth birthday, which in development terms is short,” Fulton told VideoGamer.com earlier this month. “We’re still a young company. I think we’re incredibly fortunate that we’ve been able to create not just two games, but two games of the stature and profile that being part of Forza allows us to. So for now we love working on Forza. It enables us to do things which really we set the company up to do.

“We set up, I think unassumedly the goal to become the best racing studio in the world,” he continued. “That’s still something that we want to achieve and I think we’re making great progress towards that. And being part of Forza enables us to continue doing that, to compete with the best. What the future holds no-one really knows, but for now we love where we are and we love working with Turn 10 on Forza.”

Playground Games was founded by former Codemasters staff in early 2010, and has attracted talent from multiple big name studios, including Evolution Studios, Rockstar North and Ubisoft Reflections.

Its first game, Forza Horizon, launched in 2010 and was praised by critics for its “magical moments”, excellent handling and “blend of emergent and structured gameplay”.

And Fulton has high expectations for the sequel, too, whose two year development cycle has allowed the team to “stretch [its] legs” and expand on the original game’s ideas.

“I mean, the original Horizon we did it in like 18 months,” he continued. “We were building a studio as we built the game which is not an experience I’d necessarily want to go through again. But I think what we created in that time space and under those circumstances was great.

“Certainly with [Forza Horizon 2], I feel like we’ve had the time to stretch our legs, get used to new generational technology, really give the ideas we come up with at the start of the process the time to breathe… I mean, the feature set of Horizon 2 outstrips Horizon 1’s by an order of magnitude in terms of the number and also in terms of ambition and scope. I feel really great about what we’re putting in the box at the end of this month.”

Forza Horizon 2 arrives on Xbox One on October 3. An Xbox 360 version developed by Sumo Digital is also due to arrive on the same day.