Playground Games

The Horizon studio prepares for life beyond Forza.

- Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

From its drystone walls to its streaked autumn skies, Forza Horizon 4 is Playground’s most British project, and a timely assertion of cultural identity as the studio becomes part of the Microsoft empire. Playground has always had a special relationship with Microsoft, of course, having worked on Forza with franchise creator Turn 10 since its founding in 2010. But it wasn’t till the unexpectedly wild success of Forza Horizon 3 that the idea of an acquisition solidified.

“There were conversations that we’d had from time to time, as kind of inevitably you do when you’re in a long-term partnership like that, about taking the next step in our relationship,” chief creative officer Ralph Fulton tells us during a visit to the studio’s elegant white-plastered offices in Leamington Spa. “I tend to resort to romantic allusions when talking about this stuff. I think after Horizon 3 those conversations became more serious.” Playground’s owners raised the idea of an acquisition initially with Turn 10’s studio head Alan Hartman, but the conversation soon expanded to Xbox boss Phil Spencer and head of Microsoft Studios Matt Booty. “It just made common sense,” studio director Gavin Raeburn says. “It was like, ‘Why hasn’t this happened earlier?’”