A Leamington Spa studio, part of Xbox Game Studios, making the Forza Horizon racing games and the new Fable.
Playground Games is a games studio in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. It makes the Forza Horizon series, open-world racing games where you drive around huge, beautiful landscapes, and it is also making a new version of the classic role-playing game Fable. It is part of Xbox Game Studios.
Playground was founded in 2010 at Rossmore House in Leamington Spa. Forza Horizon came out in 2012, followed by sequels set in places such as Colorado, Australia, Britain and Mexico. Forza Horizon 5 won Racing Game of the Year at the DICE Awards and British Game at the 2022 BAFTA Games Awards. Forza Horizon 6, set in Japan, was released in May 2026. Fable was announced in 2020, after the studio first revealed in 2018 that it was working on an open-world action role-playing game. Its releases so far run from Forza Horizon in 2012 on Xbox 360, through Forza Horizon 2 in 2014, 3 in 2016 and 4 in 2018, to Forza Horizon 5 in 2021, which later also came to PlayStation 5.
The studio says its goal is to create genre-defining experiences for the global games community. It describes its values as being straightforward and authentic, aiming for excellence every day, creativity, innovation and fun, and a belief that everyone matters. Microsoft acquired the studio in 2018. The founders were Gavin Raeburn, Trevor Williams and Ralph Fulton, and the studio opened in early 2010. Raeburn left in 2022 to start his own studio, and Williams became studio head.
In its own words, Playground is a collective of artists, engineers, storytellers and gamers, and it says every role, from coders and concept artists to QA and operations, is vital to its success. These are company claims, so ask about them at interview. It says it is building a team of developers from the UK and abroad. Wikipedia reports 455 employees in 2024. It formed a mobile games team in 2014. Forza Horizon was made in partnership with Turn 10 Studios, the team behind the main Forza Motorsport series. Cars, tracks, music and festival life are all part of the design, so roles stretch from vehicle artists to audio and live events.
Leamington Spa has grown into a hub for UK games studios, and Playground has expanded there, opening a second studio at St Albans House in 2018 and a third at 6 Dormer Place in 2024. A racing and role-playing studio needs programmers, vehicle and environment artists, animators, designers, writers, audio staff, producers, testers and operations staff. Its careers page lists current roles.
Website: playground-games.com
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