Maverick Games wants to “try and win Game of the Year” with Clutch
Forza Horizon 5’s former creative director and Clutch Creative Director and CEO, Mike Brown, explains why he left Playground Games to work on the new racing IP.
Before establishing Maverick Games to work on the upcoming open-world racer Clutch, Mike Brown worked on the Forza Horizon series at Playground Games and was the creative director of the fifth entry.
Leaving an established franchise to work on a new IP was inherently risky, but Brown felt compelled to do something different in the driving genre.
“I’ve been at Playground for a long time. We’ve shipped some great games. And for me, in order to get myself up in the morning and then drive at things, I need to set myself difficult-to-reach goals that might be impossible,” he said.
“There was a risk of getting complacent” working on Forza Horizon
“With FH5, I was like, right, got to win a BAFTA. Want to get Game of the Year. Everyone says a driving game can’t win Game of the Year.”
Ultimately, Forza Horizon 5 won the Innovation in Accessibility Award at The Game Awards 2021, but it was not eligible for the coveted Game of the Year award.
“Due to annoying date windows, we were available to be submitted for every one of the game awards, but not Game of the Year because we launched a few days too late,” he explained. “That had an earlier submission window.”
It did, however, win numerous Game of the Year awards at games media outlets, including IGN. “That’s obviously a great achievement for the team,” Brown reflected. “It’s amazing, because that franchise never got close to a Game of the Year nomination previously. But it then leaves us as leaders thinking, right, what’s the next thing you go after? Is it to do it again?”
“That’s not as powerful a driving force as doing something new that feels fresh and hasn’t been done before. I think if I’d stayed, there was a risk of getting complacent. There’s risk of [thinking] ‘yeah, we can do another one’. We could put a six on it.”
“You can do that. It’s [working at Playground Games] a good job and I was earning good money. But it’s not the thing that’s going to really get me driven. And I think that’s where I feel like I’m doing my best.”
After leaving Playground Games, Brown formed Maverick Games with a team of racing game veterans in 2022. This was a turbulent time for the games industry with mass layoffs.
“The industry was pretty buoyant,” said Brown. “There were dark days on the horizon. We didn’t know that yet. It probably felt a bit less risky at the time to jump up and take a bit of venture capital and do something new. In either case, I would argue that staying there and potentially not having the drive to go and push on is a risk.”
Maverick Games has lofty ambitions for Clutch. “We’re going to try and win [overall] Game of the Year,” Brown said boldly. “That’s a lens: is the thing that we’re about to ship good enough to be Game of the Year? Is every bit of this good enough to compete with an amazing AAA RPG or a God of War? That’s the pinnacle of our industry, and it gives you something to go after.”
“Leaving and doing a new thing is a different risk,” he continued. “When you start the company with seven people, the biggest risk is that seven people can’t make a game. And so you need to find and convince another 100-plus humans to join you on this ride.”
Since it was formed in 2022, Maverick Games has expanded to nearly 130 staff working on Clutch.
Traxion went hands-on with Clutch at Gamescom, so expect more content on the game soon, ahead of its spring 2027 releaseon PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S
Discussion
The game looks amazing from what they’ve shared. I think they might be able to do it.
I think they might get it. The only issue is the performance, UE5 isnt looking too great from the previews