Playground Games has hired a high profile developer away from Larian Games.
Ryan Clark was a producer at Larian, who was on board for the preproduction and Early Access period of Baldur’s Gate 3. He left the company around one month after the game released.
And now, he has been confirmed as a senior producer at Playground Games. As reported by Tech4Gamers, Ryan shared a brief message about his new role:
“I’m super excited to share I’m starting a new position as senior producer at Playground Games!”
Of course, Playground Games is currently working on upcoming Xbox exclusive Fable, the first game in the Fable franchise in six years and running. This hire is an interesting choice for Playground.
Of course, Ryan has tons of experience making AAA games, but he grit his teeth on one particular kind of game for the last few years. His move to a producer at a completely different kind of game takes some risk.
At the same time, Ryan happened to have been working on one of the most high profile and successful games of 2023. It’s double impressive when you consider that Larian Studios was an independent studio, that was even on the verge of closing a few years earlier.
As for Fable, outside of that impressive and humorous Xbox Game Showcase trailer starring Richard Ayoade, we still don’t know that much about the game yet. We do have a more solid idea of what the game could be like, compared to how Peter Molyneux blew expectations out of proportion for the original Fable in 2004.
We can reasonably expect some amount of story driven content, and a markedly humorous tone for at least part of this game’s adventure. We don’t quite know if it will still be an open world or sandbox experience, or if Playground chose to temper that open endedness, in favor of a solid narrative campaign that they’re sure will please most gamers.
If it is the latter, then it’s easier to see why Playground hired Ryan. Ryan would already be familiar with working with a similar structure. It may be more rigid in game design, but it would give him the freedom to build characters and relationships, and maybe branching paths and alternate outcomes, the same way that he did in Baldur’s Gate 3.
Maybe this is speculation at this point, but it would certainly be a great way to make this Fable remake. We all look forward to learning more about Playground Games’ plans with Fable.
