Playground Games

Playground Games is a developer.

Playground Games Webpage, Facebook

Playground Games is a British development studio founded in 2009 that specializes in racing games. The company is headquartered in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire (UK). Despite close cooperation with Microsoft Studios, Playground Games remained independent for a long time. However, in June 2018, the Redmond giant announced that it had taken the team under its wing.

The main motto of Playground Games studio is "to make the best games possible, and making them should be fun." Despite this, almost from the very beginning it has been associated primarily with the Forza Horizon racing series, which is a spin-off series of the Forza Motorsport brand developed since 2005 (exclusively for Microsoft platforms). The developers from Playground Games cooperate with slightly more experienced colleagues from Turn 10 Studios, the creators of the aforementioned Forza Motorsport series.

History of Playground Games

Beginning of business

Playground Games was founded in 2009 by Gavin Raeburn and Ralph Fulton, shortly after both men left Codemasters. The team also included developers with experience working with studios such as Bizarre Creations, Black Rock Studio, Criterion Games, Juice Games, Slightly Mad Studios, Sony Liverpool, and Reflections Interactive (now Ubisoft Reflections). The first game the developers at Playground Games worked on was the music game DJ Hero 2, co-developed with FreeStyle Games and released by Activision Blizzard in late 2010.

Forza Horizon

Shortly afterwards, the experienced American studio Turn 10 contacted Playground Games developers with a request to prepare a spin-off of its flagship Forza Motorsport series. Unlike the parent series, this project was supposed to be an open-world racing game with a slightly more arcade gameplay. Announced in March 2012, Forza Horizon was released seven months later and retained the brand's exclusivity, being available only to owners of Microsoft consoles (in this case, Xbox 360). Due to its slightly more accessible nature, Playground Games' debut production was a huge success and gained a large number of fans, both among the existing fans of the Forza Motorsport series and completely new ones. In the following months, the game also received several smaller DLCs and a large expansion, Forza Horizon 1000 Club.

Forza Horizon 2

Not resting on its laurels, Playground Games began working on a continuation of the Forza Horizon sub-series, focusing solely on the version for eighth-generation consoles (a slightly less expansive Xbox 360 version was being developed at the same time by Sumo Digital). Released in September 2014, Forza Horizon 2 surpassed its predecessor in popularity and, building on the proven mechanics of the original, offered a much larger world, more challenges and licensed cars, as well as several new features to diversify the gameplay. In the years 2014 and 2015, the "next-gen" version of the game received a wealth of DLC with additional cars, as well as two major expansions: Storm Island and Porsche.

Meanwhile, in collaboration with the film studio Universal, Playground Games studio produced (also exclusively for Xbox One) a standalone expansion for its latest game called Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast & Furious, the main purpose of which was to promote the seventh installment in the famous Fast and Furious movie series.

Forza Horizon 3

During Microsoft's conference at E3 2016, the third full-fledged installment in the Forza Horizon series was announced. The game was released in late September and once again garnered excellent reviews from both the industry and players. Forza Horizon 3 was the first game in the series (and the first from Playground Games) to be released not only on consoles but also on PC, as part of Microsoft's Xbox Play Anywhere program, which aimed to popularize Windows 10 as the ideal gaming platform.

Like its predecessor, Forza Horizon 3 received not only car packs but also two major expansions. The first of them, The Blizzard Mountain, took players to snowy tracks high in the mountains and introduced a new weather type in the form of blizzards that limited visibility, making racing more challenging. The second expansion, Hot Wheels, was developed in collaboration with the famous toy manufacturer. A mini-campaign was prepared specifically for this purpose, allowing players to participate in crazy remote-controlled car races and fight for victory on a variety of twisted tracks, both horizontal and vertical.

Forza Horizon 4

Players had to wait until October 2018 for the fourth installment of the Forza Horizon series. Like its predecessor, the game debuted not only on Xbox One but also on PC. Interestingly, it was not only included in the aforementioned Xbox Play Anywhere program, but also became part of the Xbox Game Pass subscription on launch day. This time, the developers took us on a journey to picturesque Great Britain, and the biggest new feature they introduced were seasons, which changed weekly and influenced not only the weather and the length of day and night, but also the conditions on the roads. The title was a critical and commercial success – within a week of its debut, it became the fastest-selling installment in the series, reaching two million players. In August 2019, Playground Games boasted that over twelve million people had played it.

In the meantime, Forza Horizon 4 has received two major expansions and a number of car packs. The first two were Fortune Island (which took players to an island torn apart by violent storms and boasted a uniquely diverse topography) and LEGO Speed Champions (which featured a vast new world made of the titular bricks, traversed in toy versions of real cars). Furthermore, in December 2019, the title received an update introducing the Eliminator mode, a multiplayer mode based on battle royale rules. In November 2020, Forza Horizon 4 was released on Xbox Series X/S. On March 9, 2021, the title was released on Steam, where it enjoyed considerable sales success.

Fable

Since January 2018, there were rumors that Playground Games was working on the fourth installment in the Fable series. June 2019 brought further rumors; In September, several writers from Rocksteady Studios who previously worked on Batman: Arkham Knight joined the team. These include Kim MacAskill, Martin Lancaster, Craig Owens, and Philip Huxley. The topic of a new Fable was then revived in June 2020, when Microsoft registered Twitter accounts related to the Fable and Perfect Dark brands.

And finally, on July 23, 2020, during the Xbox Game Showcase, we got official announcement of Fable by Playground Games. No specific details about this project were revealed, except that it was coming to PC and Xbox Series X. However, rumors quickly emerged that the game was not a full-fledged fourth installment of the series, but an MMO. In spring 2021, information published on the Turn 10 Studios profile suggested that the project would use ForzaTech technology, developed for the Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon series. The premiere of the new Fable , however, was a very distant topic. In June 2021, during the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase, Playground Games did not present any new materials from it.

Forza Horizon 5

Instead, the studio announced Forza Horizon 5, which was scheduled to release on November 9, 2021, for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. This time, the action took place in Mexico, and the list of the game's biggest attractions includes changing weather conditions (including phenomena such as sandstorms and tropical storms), the largest world in the history of the series and the highest quality graphics. As expected, Forza Horizon 5 was an artistic and commercial success. The title has received a lot of minor DLCs and a major expansion – Forza Horizon 5: Hot Wheels – released in July 2022.

The specter of trouble

In January 2023, news broke that key developers had departed Playground Games. These developers, led by Mike Brown, the creative director of Forza Horizon 5, decided to establish their own development studio – Maverick Games. When founding the new studio, Brown and his team emphasized that they would take creative risks, try new things, and value individuality and individual opinions. Reading between the lines, one could conclude that these were values that were nowhere to be found at Playground Games, which preferred to stick to safe, proven solutions rather than embrace innovation. Furthermore, around the same time, Gavin Raeburn left the studio, replaced by Trevor Williams as the director of Playground Games. In March 2023, Raeburn announced that he started a new development team – Lighthouse Games. The newly formed studio included former Playground Games members and other developers.

In the meantime, in March 2023, Forza Horizon 5 has received its second major expansion, the rally-focused Forza Horizon 5: Rally Adventure. Over the following months, and ultimately years, the developers were busy further developing Forza Horizon 5 (which regularly received new content) and Fable. The latter was initially scheduled for release in 2025, but its release was subsequently postponed to 2026.