British developer Playground Games has made some surprising moves in the last few months. At E3, they unveiled Forza Horizon 4, revealed that they had been acquired by Microsoft, and teased that they were working on a new non-racing game.
Today, GamesIndustry.biz revealed that Playground Games has hired several new staff members from studios like BioWare, Rocksteady Games, Ninja Theory, Motive, and Guerrilla Games. These new developer work at Playground’s newer Leamington Spa studio, which is currently working on this unannounced project, an open-world action RPG.
These new hires include Environmental Artists Scotty Brown and Noel Lukasewich, who work at EA on titles like Star Wars Battlefront II and Mass Effect, respectively. Rocksteady’s Lead Scriptwriter Martin Lancaster has also come to the studio, as well as Principal Animator Chris Goodall and QA Lead Technician Rob den Dekker from Ninja Theory.
Joe McKernan, a lead UI artist that previously left Playground Games to go work for Guerrilla and Bungie, has also returned. This is some pretty impressive talent for the studio to acquire all at once, making Studio Director Gavin Raeburn feel very optimistic about the team he is building:
“I’m really pleased with the quality of the team we’re building here at Playground. We continue to attract world-class talent from around the world thanks to our exciting projects and the passion of our team. It’s been a fantastic start for our second studio and I look forward to seeing it continue to grow over the coming months.”
DualShockers will be sure to let you know when Playground Games and Microsoft announced this open-world action RPG. In the meantime, you can check out our impressions of Forza Horizon 4 from E3 and pre-order it on Amazon.
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