A group of veteran developers from theForza Horizonstudio,Playground Games, has left to form Maverick Games, a completely new AAA company. At Playground, developers could get tenure in the production of high-end open-world racing games, but the studio has recently taken on the development of a newFablegame, too, signaling a broadening of its specialization and expertise.
WhilePlayground Gamesis, of course, mainly known for its work on theForza Horizon games, over the years it has drawn in developers with experience in a wide variety of genres and niches, and some of them have now gone off to do something new and exciting under a new developer branding. That being said, Maverick Games' talent pool is broader than it might seem at a glance.
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Mike Brown, the former Creative Director of thecritically acclaimedForza Horizon 5, is now taking on the role of studio head at Maverick Games. Brown is joined by several other Playground developers, including Executive Producer Tom Butcher and Content Director Gareth Harwood, as well as a number of veteran developers from other AAA gaming studios. For example, Electronic Arts' former Experience Design Director, Elly Marshall, has joined the team, bolstering its expertise by a fair margin. Mike Brown stated that Maverick Games has already secured seed funding and is now looking to expand its core development team to a full operative capacity.
SincePlayground Games is now working onFable, which is quite unprecedented for the studio, it’s virtually impossible to say what type of game Maverick may opt to work on first, though the veteran developers' expertise in the creation of racing titles could prove pivotal for its future work. Whatever the case may be, Maverick Games already has an “exciting ultra-high quality title” in the early stages of production, and it’s possible that it’s at least tangentially related to vehicles and driving in some capacity.
In fact, it may be important to mention that Elly Marshall herself had previously worked almost exclusively on racing games, including (but not limited to)the canceledProject Carsfranchise,Fast & Furious, and a number ofDiRTgames. Her credits also listJust Cause 3andForza Horizon 3, which means a very significant chunk of Maverick’s veteran workforce specializes in car-related video games specifically.
Those who haven’t been thrilled by2022’s best racing gamesmay be hoping to see the newly formed Maverick Games take on the genre from a fresh angle. As seemingly likely as this may be, it’s also equally possible that Maverick isn’t interested in doing something that’s been done before and that its mysterious first unannounced project is something else entirely.
