Former Playground Games Staff Establish AAA Studio Maverick Games - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 10 January 2023 / 2,246 Views
Former Playground Games creative director Mike Brown and other leaders at the Forza Horizon developer has announced the formation of a brand-new AAA video games studio based in Leamington Spa called Maverick Games.
Brown will lead the studio and is joined by former Playground Games executive producer Tom Butcher, CTO Matt Craven, content director Gareth Harwood and audio director Fraser Strachan.
Ben Penrose, who most recently worked at Sharkmob and Playground before that, has joined the studio as an Art Director. Elly Marshall, who worked as a design director at Electronic Arts, has joined the new studio as the UX/UI Director. COO Harinder Sangha will run the studio itself, who previously was a leader who helped form Sega Hardlight and Sumo Leamington.
Maverick Games currently has 10 employees with a goal to grow to 140. The first game from the developer will be an open-world AAA game for consoles and PC.
"[In 2021] we shipped Forza Horizon 5, which was a thrill to work on," Brown told GamesIndustry in an interview. "As much as I had an amazing journey at Playground, I was asking myself, what's next? Do I stick with this fun, good job? Or do I look for other opportunities? This opportunity came up. I was asked what my vision would be for a new studio... and it was lucky I had an idea in mind."
Brown added he wants to build a studio where taking risks is encouraged and have a culture where staff are encouraged to speak their mind.
"Games are made in a very certain way that brings with it real security, "said Brown. "We know that if we do these things in a row, we will hit this date and the game will come out. I think there are other ways where you can still hit that date, but also do a load of new things on the way.
"It is a truism that you can be creative, or you can be cautious, but you can't be both. You either decide to mitigate risks, which limits creativity, or you embrace risks, which releases creativity. We are going to build a team where we really encourage them to take creative risks, to try new things, and really celebrates that as part of our culture."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Well. There's only one thing to say: I wish them good luck. In this industry, they'll need it.
So where is the money coming from? You need it either way, but if you're going to be non-risk-averse, you need it more OR PERHAPS RATHER it doesn't come in as easily. I am sure the people involved can pull in investors rather easily given the pedigree and past stage-work, but at some point, a publisher is coming.
You wonder if MS gets the phone call first or if they most definitely don't.
Would be interesting if this is the team that is making fable and they wanted to have their own dev studio. Fable is rumored to be an open world game and playground even taking on the task of making it is a risk and putting their own spin is seen as them being more creative.
If that is the case, then playground is able to work on forza horizon 6 while this new team continues work on fable.
This guy had nothing to do with the Fable team which is separate from the Forza Horizon team.
