Ex-Blizzard Leaders Unveil New Venture at Dreamhaven Event

Five years ago, when Mike and Amy Morhaime founded Dreamhaven, I had the opportunity to discuss their vision for the company with several founding members. They expressed a desire to create a sustainable publishing and support system for game studios, including the two they were launching at the time, Moonshot and Secret Door, as well as other carefully selected partners.

At the conclusion of our interview, Mike Morhaime shared an ambitious goal for the new venture:

"We want, if I may be so bold as to say, to be a beacon to the industry," he stated, referencing the company's lighthouse logo. "There's a better way of approaching the business of games and the operation of a game company that can produce great results, both in terms of products and financial reward and work environment, and that maybe can help elevate the entire industry."

Around the time Dreamhaven was established, numerous studios led by former AAA executives were emerging, each promising a more sustainable and innovative approach to game development. However, the gaming industry has faced significant challenges in recent years, including a global pandemic, economic instability, mass layoffs, studio closures, and project cancellations. Many of these visionary studios either shut down before releasing any games or postponed their ambitions indefinitely.

Dreamhaven, however, has persevered. Today, the company partnered with The Game Awards for its first-ever showcase, unveiling not just one or two, but four games. Two of these are internally developed: Sunderfolk, a turn-based tactical RPG with couch co-op set to release on April 23, and the newly announced Wildgate, a crew-based first-person shooter focused on space heists, which we have previewed. The other two games are being developed externally but published and supported by Dreamhaven: Lynked: Banner of the Spark, an action-RPG from LA-based developer FuzzyBot, currently available in early access and scheduled for its 1.0 launch in May, and Mechabellum, a turn-based tactical auto-battler from Chinese studio Game River, which was released last September. With Dreamhaven's assistance, Game River aims to keep Mechabellum updated and engaging over the long term.

This is a significant achievement for a relatively new company, but Dreamhaven's ambitions extend further. The company is actively supporting ten other external studios, many of which are founded and staffed by former AAA developers. This support includes investments, consultancy, and fundraising assistance, and sometimes extends to publishing support. Speaking to Mike Morhaime at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) last week, he emphasized that Dreamhaven has always aimed to create a "net" to "capture some of this great talent that was dispersing" across the industry.

Wildgate - First Screenshots

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"We saw all these studios starting up and we have a lot of relationships," he explains. "We knew a lot of the folks starting up and we wanted to create a structure that allowed us to be helpful and root for these studios, and so we created a structure that allowed us to provide guidance and advice to some of these studios and be incentivized to want them to be successful."

Throughout GDC, discussions focused on the ongoing industry crisis, highlighting how the prioritization of profits has led to numerous cancellations, shutdowns, and layoffs. When asked about the tension between craft and business, Morhaime argues that the two are not mutually exclusive. However, he believes that allowing for occasional failure is crucial to fostering innovation.

"I think in order to create an environment that allows for innovation, you have to have a certain amount of safety and a certain amount of space to be able to experiment and try things," he notes. "We're certainly not against these products being successful and making a lot of money. I think it's about the focus. What are these teams focusing on? And they're not focusing every day on how they maximize profitability at every step. They're trying to make the best experience possible, which we think in the end is the right business strategy anyway and positions us better to be successful in the long run. There's so much competition, you know this. There are so many games that are released every year. I think the really only way to be successful is to stand out with something special."

Given that Dreamhaven and many of its partners are staffed by AAA veterans, I asked Morhaime about the most significant lesson he learned during his time at Blizzard. He highlighted the importance of an "iterative" game development process.

"It was never linear. It was never this straight line where you have this perfect plan and you execute the plan and everything goes according to plan and happiness and success follows. We always encountered obstacles and things that didn't work the way we thought, and we had enough flexibility and adaptability to address those things along the way. So, I think just approaching everything with that kind of perspective where we want to be experimental, we want to try things. If things aren't working, we want to be able to go back and fix them so that we end up with something that we're very proud of."

When asked about the biggest difference between his work at Blizzard and his current role, Morhaime emphasized "agency."

"Probably the biggest difference, this is such an experienced team, and so we're structured in a way that really gives a ton of agency to our leadership teams in the studios," he says.

"And so, it's I think just a very unique environment in terms of the relationship that our studios have with the central company. The central company or the central teams are really there to support the needs of the studio, and our studio heads and leadership, they're also founding members of Dreamhaven. So, it's really more of a partnership."

Our conversation then shifted to new technologies, including the contentious topic of generative AI. While the technology is met with skepticism by gamers and concern by many developers, several AAA gaming companies are integrating it either discreetly or openly. Morhaime acknowledges that Dreamhaven is exploring generative AI, but its use has been cautious, limited to research on best practices and internal policy drafting, and not implemented in their games.

"On the one hand, I think it's super exciting, as a technologist, as someone who just loves what technology can do. This is starting to happen in our lifetime. I think we're very privileged to get to see the birth of something so fascinating. Just a couple of years ago, I'd never imagined that generative AI would be able to do some of the things that it's currently doing. There are a lot of complexities around it, legal, ethical, it's also super hard to extrapolate out what this means to the way we live. I think it's undeniable that it will impact all of us in all sorts of ways that we can just speculate on now. I think a lot of those ways are going to be very positive, and some of them are scary, but I also don't think you can just shut it off and put it back in a box. And if you try to do that, it's not going to slow down, it's not going to stop. But I think the people who ignore it and pretend it's not there will be at a huge disadvantage."

On a less controversial note, we discussed the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2. Both Sunderfolk and Lynked are slated for release on the Switch, while Mechabellum remains Steam-exclusive due to its genre. Notably, Wildgate did not include the Switch in its multi-platform announcement. Morhaime refrained from commenting on this specifically but shared his thoughts on the new console:

"I think console transitions can be very disruptive, but they can also be very invigorating and helpful for the games industry," he says. "As a gaming startup, I think console transitions are a positive for us. If you already have games and you're selling, then there's some disruption maybe to worry about, but we don't have that problem. And as a gamer, I think console transitions are exciting."

As our conversation concluded, I asked Morhaime if he believes Dreamhaven has achieved the mission he outlined five years ago. Is Dreamhaven a "beacon to the industry"? Morhaime remains cautiously optimistic, noting that they still need to release successful games and gauge the response from players and the industry at large.

"We have to put out some games that people love and we have to be financially successful, because if we aren't either of those two things, nobody's going to look at us as a beacon for anything," he says.

"Really what I want to see happen is for Dreamhaven to build a reputation with gamers that the brand stands for something, a seal of quality, hopefully, that hopefully there's some trust that we've built up where players know that if a game is coming from Dreamhaven, regardless of genre, that it's going to be something very special and they'll want to have the curiosity to check it out."