Playground Games is best known for its Forza Horizon racing game series. While the series continues to exist, some developers have resigned in the past. With Maverick Games, among others, the creative director Mike Brown is now self-employed. AAA games are promised, and the studio names an open-world title as the first project.
For years, Forza Horizon has been at the forefront of arcade racing games. Tons of cars, strong sense of speed and beautiful visuals have always characterized the series of playground games. However, the studio had to complain about some departures in the past few months, now it is clear what is behind it. The former have teamed up and founded a new studio.
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Maverick Games was founded by creative director and current studio boss Mike Brown. Other ex-Playground collaborators include Tom Butcher as Executive Producer, Matt Craven as CTO, Gareth Harwood as Content Director, and Fraser Strachan as Audio Director. They have all worked on Forza Horizon 5 in the past.
But the other employees of Maverick Games are not circumscribed leaves. Harinder Sangha, the COO, was previously employed as co-head of studio at Sumo Digital Leamington. Ben Penrose, an Art Director, comes from Sharkmob London and Elly Marshall (UX/UI Director) was previously Experience Design Director at EA.
Mike Brown is enthusiastic about the start-up and has vague information about what Maverick Games is working on: “We are already working on an exciting title in ultra-high quality. For developers, we are building a home where everyone is encouraged to take risks, curious , to be creative and innovative, to realize oneself, and above all: to be a maverick.”
The press release also states that Maverick Games’ debut will be an open-world game. Of course, there is a suspicion that the developers are working on an arcade racer, but this has not yet been explicitly confirmed.
In the meantime it has almost become a tradition, the Hot Wheels DLC for Forza Horizon. The fun DLC for Part 5 has now also been released and we have looked at it for you.
