Confirmed: Playground takes charge of new Forza

It’s official. The next game in the award winning Forza series will be developed in the UK.

As reported over the weekend, Playground Games has taken charge of the latest title in the now annualised series. Few details have been revealed about the project, other than it is a retail game and will be released this year.

Playground Games is leading the new project, with additional support from Forza Motorsport 4 studio Turn 10.

“Playground Games has some of the biggest creative talents in the racing genre – guys from Black Rock, Bizarre and Codemasters,” Turn 10 Creative Director Dan Greenwalt told Develop.

“The Forza brand gives Playground a larger framework to tie into. And I don’t mean the marketing frame, but the creative vision of car lovers to gamers and gamers to car lovers.

“The brand forces the studio to be look more long-term and towards a vision. Sure, it allows it to plug into this group of fans but also, having made games before, it is difficult to look outside of ‘I am making the game and these are the experiences I am trying to make’, and to actually look long-term on what we actually want to do.

“I think it is a perfect marriage. We have found a great partner in Playground, we are really excited about the skills that they have and the ideas they are bringing to the table. And in many ways we are bringing our side to it as well, and our history with the franchise and where our vision is and where we want to go as a franchise.”

Greenwalt feels that despite the closure of Black Rock and Bizarre, the racing development scene in the UK remains strong

“When I first started in games, I started in sports games actually a long, long time ago and moved into racing because I loved cars,” he added.

“And one of the first titles I got to work on was Project Gotham Racing with Bizzare Creations. And I got to work with Martin Chudley who was the main man at Bizzare Creations, and I learnt a lot from him and from that team. And a lot of what they were teaching me they had learnt from working at Psygnosis and making racing games there.

“And that broke apart and reformed, and I think we are seeing that same sort of regeneration in the UK that we have actually seen for a lot longer than we are pretending. We kinda act like this is a new thing. I actually think there has been break-ups and reforming, break-ups and reforming for what, 30 years now maybe? The UK has been a really great home for racing game development.”