Launching a new studio with former Forza Horizon and Codemasters devs

Gavin Raeburn became fixated on how arcade pixels worked as a boy in England's north east and has since built an extensive credits list, producing Codemasters titles such as TOCA and Colin McRae and serving as studio head and game director on the Forza Horizon series through Horizon 5 in 2021.

After leaving Codemasters in 2010 to co‑found Playground Games, he has again departed the Forza maker to form Lighthouse Games and says "all the best people I've worked with at Codemasters and Playground" are joining him, likening it to "taking the best singers from the best boy bands in the world." Lighthouse's first project is still under wraps.

Raeburn recalls late '70s and early '80s computing as "a portal to another world" and describes starting with a coding book, a homebrew Commodore 64 project and a stack of letters to publishers. His first packaged game, Thunderbolt, attracted offers from Mastertronic and Codemasters; Mastertronic offered £2,000, David Darling's team offered £3,000, and the game was sold to Codemasters.

England, north east

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