Board 8 > Dreamhaven, new studio founded by Mike Morhaime and other Blizzard staff

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.dreamhaven.com/news/announcement

Mike Morhaime (CEO and cofounder) retired from Blizzard a couple years ago

Turns out he didn't retire! He was just tired of Activision's shit.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2020/09/23/mike-morhaime-blizzard-dreamhaven/

He talks a LOT here about how important he thinks the environment of allowing developers to make the best game is... and how corporate pressure constantly interfered with that and it was his job to deal with that, and it seems that's why he eventually left. Which I think everybody agrees that's what's wrong with Blizzard these days.

Pretty much all staff are ex Blizzard employees so this is probably a big brain drain on Blizz on top of carrying on it's values. 27 employees though, so they probably aren't close to actually shipping a game.... How fast is legit "Blizzard Soon" now that games on average already take years to develop?

I'm excited! Is this going to be True Blizzard?

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This is very interesting to me because I've been reading The WoW Diary: A Journal of Computer Game Development by John Staats. He talks extensively about his experience as an amateur 3d FPS level designer being hired to design areas during vanilla WoW development in 2001. The environment he describes reflects so much of what Mike is talking about. Having no publisher meant Blizzard didn't have the pressure other studios do about meeting deadlines and that upper brass just wanted them to focus on making things the best they could It was super collaborative, everybody talked to everybody about what they were working on and gave ideas. They literally wouldn't hire skilled staff if they weren't gamers. So everybody there is just a gamer passionate about making games. I might talk about some of the things he says in more detail if people are interested. Very insightful read.


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like a moth to a flame

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You didn't make a point. You propelled an opinion. A point would be something factual that would support your claim, but please - spare us that torture, as we are all well-aware of your grievances with Blizzard, and they're about as enjoyable of reruns as episodes of How to Get away with Murder. Which, by the way, is a show that no one should like and - in fact - no one actually does. I'm pretty sure it got its entire viewership from TVs left on in nursing homes.

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Cant wait to see them release a game in...well, basically never.

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