If you feel like you’ve already read this article, it’s probably because you have memories of Maverick Games, another studio recently founded at Royal Leamington Spa by Mike Brown, former creative director of Forza Horizon, which is also working on a big production with other Playground Games alumni. In less than three months, two ambitious new studios founded by Xbox studio executives have declared their ambitions. In the case of Lighthouse Games, the team is currently made up of around thirty people working on a new AAA license.
A phAAAre in the night
Just like Maverick Games and despite the strongly bitumen-oriented CV of its founding members (often passed through Codemasters in addition to Playground Games), Lighthouse Games does not confirm anything for the moment when it comes to the genre of its first game. I am delighted that 30 former colleagues and other industry heavyweights have chosen to join me at Lighthouse. With Horizon, Playground and I have created one of the most successful Xbox franchises of all time. We’ve had tremendous commercial success year after year, with massive critical acclaim, in line with the success I had at Codemasters directing DiRT, GRID and F1 “, welcomes Gavin Raeburn. Among the key members of the studio is creative director Jon Davis-Hunt, comic book designer between two opuses of DiRT, GRID and Forza Horizon.
According to the words of Gavin Raeburn at the microphone of Games Industry, the studio has already found its ideal partner as a publisher to support it economically. ” We wanted to work with a publisher who not only seeks a quick return on investment, but who provides security for our team, who expresses the same passion as us for creating bigger and better games, and who understands what he needs to be done to bring our game to a global audience “, he explains.
- Also Read | After 12 years of Forza Horizon, the director of Playground Games turns the page