Forza Horizon co-creator working on new “disruptive” driving game

Back in 2022, Forza Horizon co-creator Gavin Raeburn left Playground Games to form Lighthouse Games, a Leamington Spa-based studio made up of racing game veterans from Playground Games, Codemasters and Sumo Digital, to work on a new “AAA IP.”

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Lighthouse Games CEO Raeburn, whose racing game credits include the original TOCA: Touring Cars as well as Forza Horizon 1-5, and publishing director Alex Bertie revealed that the studio’s debut project will be a new “disruptive” driving game.

Specific details such as a release window and platforms are being kept under wraps for now, but the team has their sights on Forza Horizon as the benchmark to beat.

“The racing market now is very healthy, it’s very good, it’s doing well,” said Raeburn. “But if you look at the market, you look at Horizon…the number of people I’ve spoken to who’ve played Horizon who would say, ‘I didn’t think I like racing games, but I love Horizon’ – it’s been hugely successful.

“If you look at the revenue earning of that game now, it beats Gran Turismo, F1, Need For Speed and The Crew put together. That’s before Horizon went over to PlayStation. That’s massive. I think what that’s done to the market, though, [is] all the other racing developers are now copying a lot of that Horizon formula.

“So the market is successful if you’re [developing] an open world game with cars, but all these racing [developers] are delivering one type of game. That’s the opportunity for us to do something that is very different and disruptive in the racing market.”

While recent rivals like The Crew Motorfest were heavily influenced by Forza Horizon’s festival-focused gameplay, Raeburn implies that Lighthouse Games’ new driving game will forge a new path in the genre. However, it’s not yet clear whether the title will be open-world.

“I would say we’re not building Horizon. If I wanted to build Horizon 6, 7 and 8, I would have stayed at Playground. [We] didn’t want to do that – [we] wanted to do something new. And that’s what we’re doing now.”

Whereas the Forza Horizon games use Turn 10 Studios’ proprietary ‘ForzaTech’ shared with Forza Motorsport, Lighthouse Games’ new game will utilise Unreal Engine, which Raeburn describes as “one heck of a powerful tool” that has “helped unleash” creativity.  

Since it was formed in 2022, Lighthouse Games, which has expanded to a team of 130 staff, has secured funding from China’s Tencent, which purchased Sumo Group in 2022.

Lighthouse Games’ mystery new driving game is not to be confused with a separate project in development at Maverick Games, another startup studio founded by former Playground Games staff, including Forza Horizon 5’s Creative Director Mike Brown.

Founded in 2022, the studio is currently working on a yet-to-be-announced “narrative-led” open-world AAA driving game to be published by Amazon Games, with Skins TV show co-creator Jamie Brittain as lead writer.