Five years ago, when Mike and Amy Morhaime founded Dreamhaven, I talked to several founders about their vision of the company. In our interview, they told me about the desire to build a sustainable pillar of publications and support for game studies, both two, which they founded at that time (moon and secret door) and other partners they chose.
At the end of our interview, Mike Morhaime shared a rather brave goal for a fresh company:
“We want, if I can be so brave to be a lighthouse of the industry,” he told me, referring to the art of the company’s lighthouse logo. “There is a better way to approach the game and run a game company that can bring great results, both in terms of products and the financial prizes and the work environment, and which can help raise the entire industry.”
Around this time Dreamhaven was founded, the studies turned through the former AAA leaders who want to build something better and more balanced appeared everywhere with bold promises for the future. But for years since then the industry has survived global pandemic and economic instability, mass layoffs (still ongoing), studio closures and projects cancellation. Many of these visionary studies closed before they manage to spend everything or postpone their dreams for many years.
Not Dreamhaven. Today, Dreamhaven has established cooperation with awards for the first presentation, in which he presented not only one or two games, but four. Two are internally developed: suunderfolk, turn-based RPG with Couch Co-OP, appears on April 23, and the newly in love Wildgate is a first-person shooter about the performance of space seizures (by the way, we got to know her!). The other two games are developed externally, but are published and supported by Dreamhaven: One is Lynked: Banner of the Spark, Action-RPG from Fuzzybot programmers based in LA, which is already available at the early level of access and receives its 1.0. The second, Mechabellum, is a turn-based auto-battler from the Chinese studio game river, which looks exactly as if it was a group of former Starcraft programmers. Mechabellum released in September last year, but with the facilitate of Dreamhaven, Game River hopes to inform about it and fresh long -term.
This is a lot for a completely fresh game company! But that’s not all, Havehaven. The company supports ten other external studies-several of which are similarly launched and planted by former AAA programmers-on various ways, including investments, advice and support in the field of obtaining funds. Sometimes it involves publishing support, but not always. In an interview with Mike Morhaime at the Game (GDC) programmers conference last week, he tells me that from the beginning Dreamhaven, his leaders wanted to create a “network” to “capture some of these great talents that dispersed” in the industry.
“We saw how all these studies begin and we have many relationships,” he says. “We knew that many people were starting and we wanted to create a structure that allowed us to be helpful and roots for these studies, which is why we created a structure that allowed us to give tips and advice to some of these studies and encourage us to succeed.”
Throughout the week in GDC I heard discussions about the ongoing industry crisis and a role in which the prioritization of profits over all others played in the wave of appeal, closing and dismissals. I am asking Morhaime what he thinks about the tension between craftsmanship and business, but he does not think that they both are mutually exclusive. But he believes you can’t do a good game if an occasional failure is not an option.
“I think that to create an environment that allows you to innovation, you must have a certain amount of security and a specific space to be able to experiment and try things,” he says. “Certainly we are not against the fact that these products have been successful and we earn a lot of money. I think it is about what these teams focus on? And do not focus every day on how they maximize profitability at every step. They try to make the best possible experience, which, as we think, we finally think, this is the right business strategy in such a way. something special. “
From Dreamhaven and many of his partners largely filled by AAA veterans, I ask him a double -sided question: what is the biggest lesson he took from his stay in Blizzard in AAA? Morhaime replies that although there were many of them, one of the most critical was the need for a “iterative” game development process.
“It has never been linear. There has never been this simple line in which you have this perfect plan and you make a plan, and everything goes according to plan and happiness and success. We always met obstacles and things that did not work as we thought, and we had sufficient flexibility and adaptation to ask about these things. So that we have something we are very proud of.”
So on the other hand, what is the biggest difference between how he worked in Blizzard and how is he working now? In a word: agency.
“Probably the biggest difference, this is such an experienced team, which is why we are organized in a way that really gives a lot of agencies to our managerial teams in studies,” he says.
“I think that this is a very unique environment in terms of relationships that our studies have with a central company. The central company or central teams are really supported by the studies of the studio and our heads of studies and leadership, they are also members of Dreamhaven. So it’s really more partnership.”
Our discussions turn to fresh technologies, in which there is another continuous tension in the gaming industry: generative artificial intelligence. Although technology is unpopular among players and nervous-nervous for many programmers, many AAA game companies are starting to implement it behind the scenes … and even in the open space. Morhaime says Dreamhaven does not avoid this idea, but so far the employ of his company has been quite cautious and circumscribed to research on the best practices or developing internal policy. It is not used in Dreamhaven games.
“On the one hand, I think it is very exciting, as a technologist, as someone who simply loves what technology can do. This begins to happen in our lives. I think we are very privileged to see the birth of something so fascinating. Just a few years ago I never imagined that generative AI would be able to do some things that they do now. Made as it was.
Okay, what about the less controversial new technology, Nintendo Switch 2? Sunderfolk and Lynked come to the switch, and although Mechabellum can be forgiven that there is an exclusive couple, taking into account his species, the switch was particularly absent from the Wildgate multi -platform advertisement. Morhaime doesn’t talk about it anymore, but generally offers a comment to the new console:
“I think that console passages can be very destructive, but they can also be very reviving and helpful for the game industry,” he says. “As a startup of games, I think that the console passages are positive for us. If you already have games and sell, there may be some interferences that you should worry about, but we do not have this problem. And as a player I think that the console passages are invigorating.”
When we end, I ask Morhaime, does I feel that Dreamhaven was successful in the mission he put on for me five years ago? Is Dreamhaven a “lighthouse of the industry”? Morhaime does not think so … yet. They still have to spend some games and see what the reaction from players and the entire industry is. “We have to spend some games that people love, and we must succeed financially, because if we are not any of these two things, no one will look at us as a lighthouse,” he says.
“I really want Dreamhaven to build players’ reputation, that the brand is standing for something, a seal of quality, hopefully there is some trust, that we have built it where players know that if the game comes from Dreamhaven, regardless of the genre that it will be something special and will want to check how to check it.”
Rebekah Valentine is a senior Ign reporter. You can find her post on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.skyla. Do you have a hint with history? Send it to ralentine@ign.com.
