Is Playground Games Hiring for Fable 4 or Something New?
Now that Forza Horizon 4 is off their plates (make sure you read our review before it launches October 2nd), developer Playground Games is already looking ahead to their next big project.
The studio has posted 177 new jobs on their LinkedIn page for various roles to be filled like Concept Artists, Gameplay Engineers, Environment Artists, Animators, and a whole ton more. We already know the studio has been working on a new open-world action RPG (possibly Fable 4) for quite some time now so it isn’t that surprising they’ve decided to staff up. Many of the job positions make it clear they’re hiring people to join their “open world/action RPG” but others aren’t that explicit. While it’s more than likely all of these jobs are connected to the same project, it’s also entirely possible that Playground Games is assembling a brand new team, possibly for a separate new game.
What this means is that Playground Games could be turning into a three-team studio. One will take charge on the next Forza Horizon game, another on the open-world RPG, and now another for a totally new mystery game. Now that the studio has been acquired by Microsoft — and by extension now have access to additional tools and resources — it’s not too much of a stretch for them to begin prototyping for a completely new project.
Once these roles have been filled, Playground Games will consist of over 400 developers. That will make them Microsoft’s second-biggest first party studio, trailing behind Halo developers 343i who has over 500 developers. Gears of War developer The Coalition and Rare make up the third and fourth spots respectively.
What do you think about Playground Games expanding so quickly? Is it too much for them to handle three projects at once? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.