Playground Games leaders form new AAA studio Maverick Games
The new Leamington Spa AAA studio to grow to 140 people
www.gamesindustry.biz
The studio is not ready to talk about the game they’re making, but it isn’t necessarily a driving game, despite the team’s heritage.
“I'd definitely describe myself as an open world guy first, rather than a driving guy,” Brown teases. “The game will be open world, it will be AAA, it will be premium, it will have the ambition to go on and win all the awards...”
Brown also hints that the game will react to how players are consuming entertainment these days, partially driven by the rise in subscription services. It’s something he will know very well after developing some of the most popular games on Xbox Game Pass.
“What [subscription] does for us as game makers, it causes a real fight for the attention of players. Because their commitment to you is only so much as clicking download. They didn't have to drive to a shop or pay extra... or when I was a kid and had to save for three months to buy an N64 game.
“Even with games in the Steam Sale... you can buy games so cheap and try it out and you've only paid £1.50, so you can jump straight to the next game. All this means games really need to be built in a way that sells themselves in the first few seconds.
“Beyond the opening of the game, which needs to be spectacular, you need to [keep doing it] every single time they play. Because you are always in that fight for that attention.”
Brown says that games need to be built with a view to how “people expect to be entertained today”.
“I saw a stat that the average time spent watching a TikTok video is three seconds. It's hard to build a game for an attention span of three seconds. It's probably impossible. But that access to entertainment, that access to fun that people have… games need to compete. So we need to build our games where we are always addressing every player, always giving them something to do, never letting them to get to that bit in a game where it's just going to repeat for 15 hours until you get to the credits.”
As Brown looks to build a game that fits with the next generation of players, Sangha’s task is to create a modern studio without the benefits, and drawbacks, of being part of a larger organisation.
“Sega Hardlight and Sumo Leamington were blank sheets of paper,” she concludes. “And being part of a larger organisation like Sega and Sumo, there were a lot of things already there. But this is a blank notebook. It’s all those things where I go ‘if that wasn’t there, I could do this differently’.
“[Laughing] Let’s hope I don’t screw it up.”
Forza Horizon 5 creative director and several team members break away from Playground Games
A group of Forza Horizon developers have quit Xbox's Playground Games to form a new studio, Maverick Games.
www.eurogamer.net
The fresh team is led by Playground veteran and Forza Horizon 5 creative director Mike Brown, with work already underway on the a new "premium open-world game for consoles and PC".
Brown is one of six former Playground staff at Maverick. Tom Butcher, a lead producer at Playground, serves as the studio's executive producer. Matt Craven, a technical director at Playground, is its chief technical officer. Gareth Harwood, a technical art director, is Maverick's content director. Fraser Stachan, an audio director at Playground, holds the same post - as does Ben Penrose, a former Playground art director.
Maverick is based alongside Playground Games in the UK games development hub of Leamington Spa. In a press release, the studio stated it had already secured "significant seed funding" and was now "actively working on its new game". "Our goal is for Maverick Games to be a studio people will love," said Brown. "For players, we're already at work on an exciting ultra-high quality title, and for developers, we're building a home where everyone is encouraged to take risks, be curious, be creative, be innovative, be themselves, and above all - be a Maverick."
