Playground Games recruits ex-GTA 5, Phantom Pain, Battlefront 2 devs for new open world action RPG

News
By published

The Forza studio's new branch is working on its first non-racing game.

In February, Playground Games—the team behind the Forza Horizon series—announced plans to expand. A new branch would be established in Leamington Spa in England, said studio founder Ralph Fulton at the time, and a new non-racing game would be worked on. 

As reported by gamesindustry.biz, ex-Battlefront 2 senior producer Sean Eyestone is on board—who also spent ten years at Kojima Productions, working on the likes of Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain and its forerunner Ground Zeroes.

Likewise, recent months have seen chief designer Will Kennedy and combat designer Juan Fernandez di Simon sign up—both of whom worked at Rockstar North (on GTA 5) and Ninja Theory (on Hellblade) respectively. 

A blog post reports Playground's new branch has secured a new 200-person-sized office space that the team is due to move into in 2018. According to gamesindustry.biz, this will see Playground grow to 400 staff members. 

"We're delighted that we've secured a second studio to house our new team," says CEO Gavin Raeburn to GI.biz. "This is a hugely exciting project that is already attracting world-class talent to Playground.

"The combination of new blood and experienced Playground team members is already showing huge promise and I'm excited to see this talented group contribute to Playground's continued success."

Joe Donnelly
Deputy Editor, PC Gaming Show