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Playground Games, the UK developer behind the Forza Horizon series, will be opening a second studio to work on a new game.
As reported by GamesIndustry.biz, the untitled new game – currently referred to only as ‘Project 2’ – will be open world, and will not feature racing.
“We feel like we’ve become pretty good at racing games over the years,” said Playground founder, Ralph Fulton. “We can always get better, we can always strive to get better but we’d love to prove ourselves in a different genre.
“That’s another goal of Project 2, to allow us to do that. We’re going to need to hire some very talented people with experience that we don’t have.”
Playground will open the new premises within walking distance of its current studio – a move required by Fulton’s wish to almost double the developer’s current headcount of 115 employees.
Part of the motivation for Project 2 is to provide career development for those who have only ever worked at Playground and, as such, on the Forza Horizon series:
“I remember many of [our developers] starting green as you like. They’ve grown up in this studio, grown in experience over three games of increasing quality, and are now in a position where they are looking to develop their careers. We want them to do that here rather than somewhere else, but with only one team the opportunities for that are limited.”
It may also provide an opportunity to work on different platforms – while all of Playground’s work has been Xbox-exclusive, Playground itself is an independent developer, meaning Project 2 could be multiplatform, or exclusive to another console.
However, Fulton is keen to stress that Playground will continue to focus on Forza : “Our business with Forza over the last six, seven years has been great for us,” he says. “It remains the cornerstone of our business – we’re not running away from racing, we still feel passionate about making new racing games and delivering new experiences for our players.”
It’s an exciting move – Forza Horizon has never scored less than 9/10 in IGN reviews, with last year’s Horizon 3 proving the best of the bunch. It’ll be fascinating to see what Playground comes up with outside of its comfort zone.
Joe Skrebels is IGN’s UK News Editor, and he hopes that,at the very least, Playground brings along the amazing grumpy classical music DJ from Horizon 3 to its new game. Follow him on Twitter.
