Ex Blizzard CEO, Mike Morhaime creates new company named Dreamhaven

[Pika-Cthulhu]

All it takes is one dangerhair to kvetch about old white men trying to relive their glory days of chauvinistic game design to have them cuck out and hire a cadre of overseers that will taint any creative vision with pandering and equity based hiring policies

I really should have set up a series of poe accounts by now

 

[DeepOcean]

I can't recall a single instance of a new company formed by industry has-beens yielding a great game. Not one.

Old Blizzard ain't coming back, chief.

Daniel Vavra made Kingdom Come after Mafia and Hidden and Dangerous.

He is a based stubborn motherfucka, the complete contrary of "Where is mah bonus?" type of scared middle aged corporate developer.

 

[Luckmann]

Looking at job postings: both studios are making online games (surprise).

probably some WoW clone, Starcraft clone with a focus on korean market, Overwatch clone, and some battle-royale.
Good old Blizzard my ass, into the trash it goes!

Can we at least wait until they announce their games before we bitch about them?

Yes, hello? You say June, you say? 2020, you say? Ok, yeah, no.

 

[Theodora]

Any potential fuck-you to Bobby Kotick sounds promising.

The landscape is too woke nowadays for most western developers to create something truly great. It's all been downhill since the magic of the 90s.

Nah, that's horseshit fam. Go play Subnautica or Yakuza 0 if you want some recent magic.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Bobby Kotick is based, he pays his employees in goodboy points.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Any "clone" of the franchises created by Blizzard is going to be too much of a tall order for a starting company. Think of how much money and resources they'd need for a "WoW" clone. I don't see it happening.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

Because the people making the new games aren't told what to do by a money grubbing company that will fire them if they don't agree?

That's why we're announcing our brand new Fig campaign. This totally isn't a ponzi scheme and we aren't just going to bring in a publisher later anyway. We're also not totally going to put our games up on Epic Game Store as exclusives. No.

How many times must we teach you this lesson old man.

 

[Corvinus]

Any "clone" of the franchises created by Blizzard is going to be too much of a tall order for a starting company. Think of how much money and resources they'd need for a "WoW" clone. I don't see it happening.

Not to mention that the great creativity of the 90's, which still was present in the early 2000's but fading fast, is but a memory in 2020. As TemplarGR said, old Blizzards strength was taking the ideas of others and refining them. There is almost exclusively shit to be borrowed from today. No originality whatsoever.

 

[Max Heap]

I couldn't find any discussing about this, and can't believe this isn't headlining news. This is HUGE!

https://www.wowhead.com/news=318121/mike-morhaime-announces-new-game-company-dreamhaven

Thoughts?

This is obviously a return to form of Old Blizzard, since there's numerous old Blizzard veterans joining the company and sub-studios, and a big big FUCK YOU to Bobby and Activision.

I'm hyped.

Morhaime was the guy that pushed Blizzard into the e-sports industry. An absolutely awful decision that was rightfully (and - considering the current situation - thankfully) reversed by Activision after he left. Also, Diablo Immortal was initiated under him, which caused the disastrous Blizzcon of 2018. Morhaime got out, just a few days before that whole spectacle. I wonder whether he sold stock, cause that shit plummeted brutally for the next few days (google NASDAQ: ATVI). In fact, it just got back where it was in October 2018.

Say about Kotick whatever you want but the guy knows when something isn't going to work out financially. He was also right about Tim Schafer and many others throughout his career.

So, keeping that in mind, Morhaime seems like he was a King de Jure at Blizzard. He was a veteran, but that does not necessarily make you a good CEO.

I'm ready to give him the benefit of the doubt, since it's a fresh new company, but to be honest: That's quite a team of high profile employees he's got there. Those guys must be quite expensive.
Just going by the size of that team, they'll need a hit or two within the next, lets say, 2-3 years.
Something that is at least as successful as for example Torchlight, which was, if I remember correctly, also developed by old Blizzard employees.

I'm curious what they'll develop but I have a feeling this is going to be one of those "veteran developers making that game you always wanted" scenarios, which ends in a crappy kickstarter campaign and lots of broken promises.

 

[Daedalos]

I couldn't find any discussing about this, and can't believe this isn't headlining news. This is HUGE!

https://www.wowhead.com/news=318121/mike-morhaime-announces-new-game-company-dreamhaven

Thoughts?

This is obviously a return to form of Old Blizzard, since there's numerous old Blizzard veterans joining the company and sub-studios, and a big big FUCK YOU to Bobby and Activision.

I'm hyped.

Morhaime was the guy that pushed Blizzard into the e-sports industry. An absolutely awful decision that was rightfully (and - considering the current situation - thankfully) reversed by Activision after he left. Also, Diablo Immortal was initiated under him, which caused the disastrous Blizzcon of 2018. Morhaime got out, just a few days before that whole spectacle. I wonder whether he sold stock, cause that shit plummeted brutally for the next few days (google NASDAQ: ATVI). In fact, it just got back where it was in October 2018.

Say about Kotick whatever you want but the guy knows when something isn't going to work out financially. He was also right about Tim Schafer and many others throughout his career.

So, keeping that in mind, Morhaime seems like he was a King de Jure at Blizzard. He was a veteran, but that does not necessarily make you a good CEO.

I'm ready to give him the benefit of the doubt, since it's a fresh new company, but to be honest: That's quite a team of high profile employees he's got there. Those guys must be quite expensive.
Just going by the size of that team, they'll need a hit or two within the next, lets say, 2-3 years.
Something that is at least as successful as for example Torchlight, which was, if I remember correctly, also developed by old Blizzard employees.

I'm curious what they'll develop but I have a feeling this is going to be one of those "veteran developers making that game you always wanted" scenarios, which ends in a crappy kickstarter campaign and lots of broken promises.

You talk alot of retarded shit. Do you have any sources to back up your claims? Blizzard pushing e-sports was a bad idea? lol. yeah ok sure.

Mike spearheaded diablo immortal? source?

Also more of the core team seems to be old blizzard employees, so im betting that Mike made them a sweet deal, not the best pay in the industry, but much more creative control and free thinking. I'd take that deal for less pay. I'm pretty sure Mike also made bank from the blizzard deal when he left.

 

[Daedalos]

Any "clone" of the franchises created by Blizzard is going to be too much of a tall order for a starting company. Think of how much money and resources they'd need for a "WoW" clone. I don't see it happening.

WoW has become bloated. Much like most Blizzard games now are bloated with shit that take massive ressources and dev hours.

You could grind WoW down to half or what it is, and you would have a fine tuned fine cut mmorpg that most would enjoy.

Dreamhaven could release a WoW light 1.0 and it would still sell, if it just kept to the core values of the mmorpg design and actually made it fun, without 90940234 ludicrous systems and other dumb bloat mechanics that just further tries to fuck the player and dilutes the actual core fun gameplay of something like WoW.

WoW vanilla was buggy and missing alot of content, but at the core it was a fun game. And it required endlessly LESS amounts of ressources and dev time then, than current WoW iteration does, and that's not a good thing, because of the bloat as explained. Every WoW expansion the past 3-4 expansions have been dogshit on a stick and NOTHING compared to the superior first 3 expansions that they put out, which were alot simpler, alot more fun, and alot more engaging with less bloat.

A back to the roots kind of simple good game design that Blizzard made popular in the 90s from Dreamhaven would be a hit, and hit right at the center of many old school PC fans and mmorpg fans.
We will see.

 

[TemplarGR]

Say about Kotick whatever you want but the guy knows when something isn't going to work out financially. He was also right about Tim Schafer and many others throughout his career.

Kotick is a slime, but he is intelligent and understands the gaming industry like few others in the world. There is a reason he is filthy rich now. I don't like him for the known reasons most don't like him, but i find most of the time that i agree with his views about the industry. More often than not.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Morhaime was the guy that pushed Blizzard into the e-sports industry. An absolutely awful decision

Says who? The Warcraft games and Starcraft have been a massive success, and from a financial point of view it make perfect sense for him to capitalize on the emergence of online gaming which he oversaw when that was still in its infancy. Hell, one of my fondest memories as a kid was playing Warcraft II in LAN with my friends.

The guy has been with Blizzard from day one and considering we are talking about the most successful gaming company in history that ought to say something about him. Or maybe not i don't know but considering he has been with them since 1991 you can pretty much credit him with everything the company has done since, the good and the bad, which really says nothing in the end.

 

[Bohrain]

I highly doubt they are going to make an MMO, are even the Koreans producing anything new? There is no profit to be made for new releases in that genre and Morhaime if anyone should know it.

 

[Max Heap]

You talk alot of retarded shit. Do you have any sources to back up your claims?

Try the quarterly reports of the company + earnings calls.
I was invested in ATVI for over a year until I kicked them out of my portfolio cause they kept acting like dumb fucks.
The last straw was them starting to suck the CCP's dick.

Blizzard pushing e-sports was a bad idea? lol. yeah ok sure.

It's not a big market for a company like Blizzard.
And now it's a dead market.

Mike spearheaded diablo immortal? source?

He was the CEO at the time. They were trying to break into the east asian mobile market. You don't make moves like that as a "creative side project" of some middle management guy.

 

[Ismaul]

Dreamhaven? I bet their specialty is vaporware.

 

[Silly Germans]

For a moment i hoped they would add something fresh to the real-time strategy department that is leading a fairly miserable existence at the moment, but it looks like they will make a pointless online mmorpg-something and add another entry to the overabundant modern style pixel poop that is trendy currently. Or have i missed something ?

 

[Lyric Suite]

You haven't missed anything. Everything is shit.

 

[Jaedar]

There is almost exclusively shit to be borrowed from today. No originality whatsoever.

I disagree, but the market for "take other people's ideas and polish them, make lots of money" is very crowded these days. What advantage does blizzard veterans have in this, compared to indie studios in cheaper parts of the world, or the massive budget of AAA?

 

[Corvinus]

I disagree, but the market for "take other people's ideas and polish them, make lots of money" is very crowded these days.

Perhaps I just haven't played the right new games? But overall, the "big" titles of today are surely stale derivations of ideas being done better in the past. An example which really stood out to me was Pillars of Eternity contra Baldur's Gate. Not saying the old games weren't flawed, but...

What advantage does blizzard veterans have in this, compared to indie studios in cheaper parts of the world, or the massive budget of AAA?

The most obvious - being good at it before probably won't count, as seen through the later projects of other developers.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

I fail to see why I should be hyped up for this. Sure, he was at the helm when Blizzard was making great games, but he was also there at the decline. The decline is much more recent than the incline and he has no excuses for that decline.

 

[deama]

Let me guess, they'll make a decent entry to a new series, then a few years later they'll follow up with a good sequel, and then nothing for several years until most of the vets decide to leave and they're replaced by some newbois that make something completely different, which fails, and then they try to make an mmorpg with similiar fomular to the original games, change their minds half way and go bankrupt trying something new.

 

[Wilian]

I doubt Activision was making game design decisions before they kicked Morhaine out of the CEO spot. Until that point the shit games were almost 100% Blizzard's fault IMO.

The reason behind Blizzard's decline was WoW money, casualization and the old guard moving from dev positions to management positions and being replaced by talentless hacks who "dreamed to work at Blizzard" or whatever.

Activision might not have directly been making design decisions, but indirectly they absolutely were. They control development time, release dates, Q&A, they control the money, the time, the devs, everything.

Which directly impacts on how creative you can be as a dev, how much time you have, how much content you can provide, or how much of the content you want cost alot of money that Activision will say NO to.

Blizzard used to be about quality, WHEN ITS DONE and just pure talent. When Activision stepped in in 2008, there was a clearcut change in the vision, nature and development of the company, which we've seen ever seen, making most old veterans leave the company in disgust, and rightfully so.

So is that why Blizzard had 2-3 failed 5+ year projects during Activision era, the biggest being 8+ Project Titan? Because Activision told them the dev and release dates?

 

[Daedalos]

I doubt Activision was making game design decisions before they kicked Morhaine out of the CEO spot. Until that point the shit games were almost 100% Blizzard's fault IMO.

The reason behind Blizzard's decline was WoW money, casualization and the old guard moving from dev positions to management positions and being replaced by talentless hacks who "dreamed to work at Blizzard" or whatever.

Activision might not have directly been making design decisions, but indirectly they absolutely were. They control development time, release dates, Q&A, they control the money, the time, the devs, everything.

Which directly impacts on how creative you can be as a dev, how much time you have, how much content you can provide, or how much of the content you want cost alot of money that Activision will say NO to.

Blizzard used to be about quality, WHEN ITS DONE and just pure talent. When Activision stepped in in 2008, there was a clearcut change in the vision, nature and development of the company, which we've seen ever seen, making most old veterans leave the company in disgust, and rightfully so.

So is that why Blizzard had 2-3 failed 5+ year projects during Activision era, the biggest being 8+ Project Titan? Because Activision told them the dev and release dates?

Because Activision pushed for market, for a product, for release dates, yes. Get shit out the door faster to appease the shareholders and big money men, than what Blizzard was comfortable with, but ultimately had to comply with, given they are owned by Activision and its shareholders. Isn't it obvious at this point?

What's been Blizzard's trademark since before they got bought by Activision? It's done when it's done... and SOONTM. None of that shit post-activision. Buggy shit release one after another, and total misfire of dev time, ressources and management of projects

 

[Great Deceiver]

I can't recall a single instance of a new company formed by industry has-beens yielding a great game. Not one.

Old Blizzard ain't coming back, chief.

Daniel Vavra made Kingdom Come after Mafia and Hidden and Dangerous.

This is true. I love KC : D.