Playground Games has firmly established itself as one of the prominent racing genre developers with the very strong Forza Horizon series, but the studio wants to broaden its…horizons. In an effort to flesh out the talent, the UK-based studio has recruited staff from EA Motive, BioWare, Rocksteady, Guerilla Games, and Ninja Theory for the recently-opened second studio. All of these new hires will be working on an unannounced open-world action RPG.
“I’m really pleased with the quality of the team we’re building here at Playground,” studio director Gavin Raeburn told GameIndustry.biz. “We continue to attract world-class talent from around the world thanks to our exciting projects and the passion of our team. It’s been a fantastic start for our second studio and I look forward to seeing it continue to grow over the coming months.”
The full list of new staff goes as follows: Noel Lukasewich from BioWare, Rob den Dekker from Ninja Theory, Scotty Brown from EA Motive, Chris Goodall from Ninja Theory, Joe McKernan who’s formerly of Playground, and Martin Lancaster from Rocksteady Studios.
Playground Games and Ninja Theory are a couple of the studios that Microsoft revealed it had acquired during E3 2018, so staff shift between the two makes perfect sense. The other staff additions show that Playground Games is aiming for the stars with this unrevealed RPG and, hopefully, it will reach the levels of quality shown in the Forza Horizon series. Stay tuned to Shacknews for additional updates.
Source: Shacknews Forza Horizon Devs Recruit Former BioWare and Ninja Theory Staff For Unannounced RPG