Several developers from Playground Games, the group behind Forza Horizon, have departed to establish a new studio focused on the development of cutting edge, open-world games. It is headed up by Mike Brown, the creative director of Forza Horizon 5. Brown also serves as Maverick’s creative director. Chief operations officer Harinder Sangha joins the studio from Sega Hardlight and Sumo Leamington.
During his time at Playground, Brown’s performance appraisals kept mentioning one word: Maverick. Taking creative risks seems to be the goal of the new studio. “Don’t be boxed in by rules that might not even be real,” Brown stated.
The Maverick team also includes Forizon alums Tom Butcher, Matt Craven, Gareth Harwood, and Fraser Strachan, as well as executive producer Tom Butcher and chief technology officer Matt Craven. Former Playground employee Ben Penrose comes from Sharkmob, the developers of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodhunt. Elly Marshall joins Maverick from EA as UX/UI director.
Maverick plans to expand to 140 employees.
The new studio wants to make “developer-first” games, giving staff members the ability to voice their thoughts and opinions throughout the development cycle.
Brown didn’t elaborate on current or future projects at the newly formed Maverick, but he expects it will involve capturing our increasingly short attention spans.
“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… So we need to build our games where we are always addressing every player, always giving them something to do, never letting them get to that bit in a game where it’s just going to repeat for 15 hours until you get to the credits.”
