Five years ago, when Mike and Amy Morhaime founded Dreamhaven, I had the privilege of speaking with several of the founding members about their vision for the company. They shared their aspirations 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 partners they would collaborate with.
At the conclusion of our interview, Mike Morhaime articulated a bold ambition for Dreamhaven:
"We want, if I may be so bold as to say, to be a beacon to the industry," he stated, alluding to 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 emerged, each with grand promises of creating a more sustainable model. However, the industry has since faced challenges such as a global pandemic, economic instability, mass layoffs, studio closures, and project cancellations. Many of these visionary studios have either shut down without releasing a single game or postponed their ambitions indefinitely.
Not Dreamhaven. Today, Dreamhaven made a significant announcement in partnership with The Game Awards during its first-ever showcase, unveiling not one or two, but four new games. Two of these are internally developed: Sunderfolk, a turn-based tactical RPG with couch co-op set to release on April 23, and Wildgate, a newly announced crew-based first-person shooter centered around space heists (which we had the opportunity to preview!). The other two games are externally developed but published and supported by Dreamhaven: Lynked: Banner of the Spark, an action-RPG from LA-based developer FuzzyBot, already available in early access and slated for a 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 support, Game River aims to keep Mechabellum updated and vibrant for the long term.This marks a significant achievement for a relatively new player in the games industry! Yet, Dreamhaven's efforts extend beyond these releases. The company is currently supporting ten other external studios—many led by ex-AAA developers—through investments, consultancy, and fundraising support. This support sometimes extends to publishing but isn't limited to it. At the Game Developers Conference (GDC) last week, Mike Morhaime explained that from the outset, Dreamhaven's goal was 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 says. “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, the industry's ongoing crisis was a hot topic, with many pointing to the prioritization of profits as a key factor in the wave of cancellations, shut-downs, and layoffs. When asked about the balance between craft and business, Morhaime argued that the two are not mutually exclusive, but emphasized the importance of allowing for occasional failure to foster 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 said. “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 took away from 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."On the other hand, I inquired about the biggest difference between his time at Blizzard and his current approach at Dreamhaven. He succinctly answered: 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 said.
“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 turned to new technologies, particularly the controversial topic of generative AI. While many in the gaming community are wary of this technology, several AAA companies are starting to incorporate it. Morhaime shared that Dreamhaven is cautiously exploring generative AI, mainly for research into best practices and internal policy development, but not yet for use 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.”Shifting to a less contentious topic, I asked about the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2. Both Sunderfolk and Lynked are slated for the Switch, while Mechabellum remains Steam-exclusive due to its genre. Notably, Wildgate's multi-platform announcement did not include the Switch. Morhaime offered his general 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 said. “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 we concluded our discussion, I revisited Morhaime's initial goal for Dreamhaven. Has the company succeeded in becoming a "beacon to the industry"? Morhaime believes it's too early to claim success; they need to release their games and gauge the industry's and players' responses. “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 said.
“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.”
