There’s a strange story ongoing right now regarding Playground Games.
Playground is best known for their work on the Forza racing franchise, but in last year’s Xbox Games Showcase, they formally announced their first non-Forza project, the upcoming reboot of Fable. This title promises a lot, from a big role playing narrative, to Richard Ayoade’s surprising turn as a gigantic antagonist.
But we haven’t learned a lot about Fable since that introduction. Now, this rumor raises questions on whether development is going well, or poorly, or exactly what’s going on.
As shared on Twitter by Idle Sloth:
“(FYI) Several devs from Fable and Forza Horizon have left Playground Games. Playground Games doesn’t have a new recruitment announcement to replace these people. Usually, employees leave the studio when their work is finished.”
Idle Sloth then links to the LinkedIn accounts of the people who have left as proof of their exit. We won’t name these people but will point out the people who confirmed their exits were working as Narrative Director, Principal Level Designer, Co-Dev Art Director, Script Writer, and Principal Vehicle Artist, respectively.
It’s a little hard to parse really what these exits mean. It’s true, as Idle Sloth claims, that these exits sometimes happen when the people involved have ended their project. It’s their prerogative to move on, or maybe find work again in the company. It’s not mentioned here whether they were regularized employees or contractual/part time hires. If it was the latter, of course, then everything would line up fine.
Two weeks ago, one of Playground’s co-founders, Gavin Raeburn, founded a new studio called Lighthouse Games, with some former Playground employees. As Zuby Tech pointed out, there’s also another studio made of former Playground employees, called Maverick Games. They seem to have been founded all the way back in January.
But this is not the whole story. Fable’s Principal Game Designer, Hervé Gengler, made this job opening post on Twitter the day before:
“Hi! We are looking for a Cinematic Producer – Contract to work on #Fable with us.
You can find more details and apply on our website or by using the referral link below!”
So, it’s true that a lot of people have left the company, but Gengler’s tweet makes it seem like Playground Games is hiring up to get people to work on Fable. It will be interesting to see if Microsoft or Playground Games feels they have to explain.
But we’ll put forward our own theory here. We think the people who left the company were working on Playground’s Forza racing games. But the transition to becoming the Fable team means that Playground itself has to change, to be better capable of making such an action RPG. There are people who are still at Playground from when they started, of course, but the studio actively chose to change to be better equipped for this ongoing franchise and genre shift.
I’m afraid this theory doesn’t have any answers on how long we’ll have to wait for Fable, but it certainly sounds like Playground Games and Microsoft are putting the money and work in to make sure they get it exactly right. Maybe they might even deliver the game that Peter Molyneux originally promised to us, nearly two decades ago.
