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Playground Games
June 13, 2026 at 12:43 PM
Added Third Kind Games as a support studio and noted the Blizzard cinematics partnership
Playground Games was founded in November 2009 in Leamington Spa, England. The three co-founders, Gavin Raeburn, Trevor Williams, and Ralph Fulton, all came from Codemasters, where they had worked on racing games. Racing games are what Playground Games was built to make, and it is what they did for their first decade.
Their first game was Forza Horizon, released in 2012. It was a critical and commercial success. They followed it with Forza Horizon 2 (2014), Forza Horizon 3 (2016), Forza Horizon 4 (2018), and Forza Horizon 5 (2021). Every entry in the series reviewed well. Forza Horizon 5 sold over 35 million copies.
Microsoft acquired Playground Games at E3 in June 2018, bringing the studio into Xbox Game Studios. By that point, Playground Games was already building a second team for the Fable project.
Gavin Raeburn, co-founder and studio director, left Playground Games in January 2022. Trevor Williams, the other co-founder, replaced him as studio head. The transition happened relatively quietly. Williams had been with the studio from the start and his promotion maintained continuity in the studio's leadership.
Ralph Fulton remains as the third co-founder in a leadership role. He is General Manager and Game Director on Fable, and has been the public face of the project in press interviews and presentations.
All of Playground Games' offices are in Leamington Spa. The original studio handles Forza Horizon. Studio 2 opened in 2017 specifically for Fable development. Studio 3 opened in July 2024. The studio had 455 employees by the end of 2024.
Leamington Spa is a mid-sized town in Warwickshire, in the English Midlands. It has an unusually high concentration of game studios for its size, including Codemasters (before their acquisition by EA) and several other developers. Playground Games' roots at Codemasters are part of why the studio is there.
Several senior staff are leading the Fable project:
Ralph Fulton is General Manager and Game Director. He co-founded the studio and has been the public face of the Fable reboot in press interviews and presentations.
An Associate Game Director on the project joined Playground Games after eight years at a major open-world studio, contributing open-world design experience to the Fable team.
A second Associate Game Director on the project appeared during the Developer Direct presentation in January 2026; the name has not been confirmed against a primary Playground Games or Xbox source.
A senior gameplay designer joined the team from another studio behind a critically-acclaimed narrative-action title, bringing action-gameplay experience to the project.
A senior gameplay designer with prior experience on a critically-acclaimed action-RPG joined Playground Games and spent over a year designing and implementing combat systems for Fable; the specific prior credit has not been independently corroborated.
Anna Megill joined Playground Games in December 2020 as Lead Writer, with prior writing experience on a narrative-action title at another major studio. She was promoted to Narrative Lead in July 2022. In August 2023, she left the project and later moved to a different studio.
Her replacement has not been publicly named. Given that she departed roughly midway through developmentthe narrative direction may have shifted after her departure, though Playground Games has not commented on this.
Eidos-Montreal contributed a sizable supporting team to Fable, with industry reporting putting the headcount at approximately 100 developers though Playground Games and Xbox have not published the figure. The collaboration was reported publicly in 2022 and confirmed by Playground Games on June 9, 2024. The Eidos-Montreal team brought experience with action-adventure combat systems. The contract between Eidos-Montreal and Playground Games ended in 2025. See the Development History for the full timeline.
Beyond Eidos-Montréal, Fable’s development has drawn on two further partners. Third Kind Games, a UK co-development studio, is credited as a support studio on the project. Separately, Blizzard Entertainment’s cinematics team is assisting with cutscenes, confirmed by Xbox Chief Content Officer Matt Booty in April 2026. Both are framed as specialist contributions layered on top of the core team at Playground Games rather than hand-offs. See the Blizzard Cinematic Collaboration article for the cinematics arrangement.
Fable runs on ForzaTech, the proprietary engine developed by Turn 10 Studios for the Forza racing franchise. Playground Games has been using ForzaTech since their first Forza Horizon game. Adapting a racing engine for an open-world RPG was a significant technical challenge, but it gave them a head start on open-world rendering, weather systems, and dynamic lighting. See development for more details on the engine.
Playground Games' entire history before Fable was racing games. This has led to skepticism about whether a racing studio can make a good RPG. Fulton has addressed this head-on. The studio hired senior staff with open-world design and action-gameplay experience from other major studios.
The counter-argument is that Forza Horizon is already an open-world game with progression systems, world events, and freeform exploration. It is not a pure circuit racer. The studio has experience building large, interactive worlds. The question is whether that experience translates when the cars are replaced with swords and spells.
While Fable is in developmentthe Forza Horizon team continues its own work. Forza Horizon 6 released in May 2026, ahead of Fable's February 2027 launch. The two projects run in parallel across different studios within the same company.
