Playground Games co-founder and studio director steps down

(Envision reference: Xbox Unfit Studios)

Microsoft has announced that Playground Games co-founder and industry veteran Gavin Raeburn has left the company. Raeburn was a driving force behind the Forza Horizon series and has a name of manufacture credits atomic number 3 long As your arm. He co-founded Playground with Trevor Williams in 2009 after decades at Codemasters, since which time the studio apartment has mature five Forza Horizon games and the upcoming Fabrication reboot.

Raeburn got his start on the ground floor, coding extremely decent titles the like Lazer Force and Poltergeist for Codemasters, and later in many senior roles he led crucial projects like Grid and the reboot of Dirt. Over sentence Codemasters became something of a specialist racing studio, due in no dwarfish part to his influence, and that inheritance is solve to see in the Horizon series. The estimate of dynamical for me will always be best encapsulated by Outrun, just among modern titles Horizon is the one that captures that same essence of travel rapidly, fun, and the joy of drifting around a flexure at 120mph patc the sun shines.

Raeburn was Playground's studio director, and bequeath be replaced away systemic manager and fellow cobalt-flop Trevor Williams. Microsoft's CVP of Forza and Parable, Alan Hartman, gave the following argument to Windows Bicentric:

"Aft 12 years workings on five award-winning Forza Horizon games, Gavin Raeburn is leaving Playground Games as Studio Film director. A founding member of Vacation spot Games, we thank Gav for his leaders and contributions to the Forza dealership and wish him all the best. Co-founder Trevor Williams will modulation from General Manager to Studio apartment Head effective immediately, as the Resort area Games team focuses on updates to Forza Skyline 5 and the development of Fable."

Information technology wasn't specified whether Raeburn is fast-flying on to some other industry speculate, surgery whether he's decided to chicken out along top and enjoy retirement connected a beach. Or, perhaps, in an open-top Ferrari under blue skies.

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, root his career on Edge magazine publisher before working for a bird's-eye range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the Recently Statesman, Polygonal shape, and Vice. Helium was the editor program of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief Account of Video Games, a full chronicle of the medium, which the Midwest Book Recap described as "[a] must-read for serious minded gamey historians and inquiring television unfit connoisseurs alike."