About Dreamhaven

[Edge-]

Hell, the dude is worth like 2 billion last I checked. He doesn't need external funding.

Apparently it's closer to $500M, but he's not gonna fund things himself. That's a risky business strategy, especially when you can likely pretty safely get outside investment.

[Cæli]

Hell, the dude is worth like 2 billion last I checked. He doesn't need external funding.

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Right, if Minecraft has taught us anything, it's that graphics are all important
/s

you could recognize minecraft between a thousand game, and it uses an engine closely made from scratch, and it's a worldwide success; that just proves my point

[Zyky]

You mean good ole blizzard who had this? Soon™ I think you are misremembering how blizzard has ALWAYS been.

I'm talking specifically about content and new IPs, not specific release dates. An example I can give is all the cut content from Warlords that they announced.

Also there's nothing wrong with "soon". I'd rather a game come out ready then have the shit show we've been having with recent WoW expansions.

[Jastall]

Dividends don't matter. When you're publicly traded you have a fiduciary obligation to deliver value to your shareholders, regardless of if you pay dividends or not.

But honestly, from the way Morheim talks about the company it doesn't sound like he ever wants to go public. And given his name attached to it (and others), I honestly don't have much concern for his ability to find investment for the company while remaining private.

Which is why I hope they don't make an MMO, at least at first. They're insane money pits and I'd rather they tackle a genre that a newly built studio can feasibly make. But Morhaime is no Chris Roberts and I'm fairly confident he knows all that better than I do.

Doubt we'll see anything from them for years anyway, designing games from scratch takes a very long time.

[Orange Joe]

I'm talking specifically about content and new IPs, not specific release dates. An example I can give is all the cut content from Warlords that they announced.

Also there's nothing wrong with "soon". I'd rather a game come out ready then have the shit show we've been having with recent WoW expansions.

Warlords wasn't the first time they cut advertised/"promised" content either. Pretty sure you can go all the way back to vanilla for that. If I remember right Northrend and outland was suppose to be part of vanilla

[rhorle]

a small company can never have hope to face mega cooperations in brutal capitalism system that is global world economy right now

Small companies have success all the time. Look at Valheim. There are plenty of success stories out there if you are willing to look just a little bit. Look at Stardew Valley. Look at NMS (even though they parternerd with Sony for a little bit). You don't have to hunt for these small studio success stories because Steam and gaming sites always cover the critical hits. Or streamers who use the latest trend in gaming.

Even big companies have hits and misses with varying degree of marketing or fan fare. Star Wars Squadrons was a pretty big hit but wasn't expected to be a mega hit. They even added limited post-launch content because of how well liked it was. The only thing the larger companies have going for them is the ability to absorb failures. Where a smaller company likely closes or gets bought if something doesn't turn out well. But that is also why they have smaller teams and lower budgets.

[HansOlo]

...what? Who's working for free?



Valve exists. Bohemia Interactive exists. Supergiant Games exists. Stardock exists. Croteam exists. All developers with games that sell millions of copies and get extensive media coverage.

What gaming companies own gaming media outlets? The closest we really had was much beloved magazines like Nintendo Power, but that hasn't existed for ages.

Cool - I honestly thought that a giant like Valve was owned by shareholders(had to look it up). Maybe there is hope then.

[LordVargK]

But honestly, from the way Morheim talks about the company it doesn't sound like he ever wants to go public. And given his name attached to it (and others), I honestly don't have much concern for his ability to find investment for the company while remaining private.

Why should he? If he wanted to give control away he could have stayed at Blizzard.

[Edge-]

Why should he? If he wanted to give control away he could have stayed at Blizzard.

Should he what, seek outside investment? Limit his own personal financial risk/liability, mostly.

It's not as if it's impossible to get outside funding without tons of strings attached, even the "Fuck publishers, we're doing it all ourselves!" folks at CIG have sought and secured outside investment in SC/SQ42 - https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...nal-investment

The more confidence investors have, the more willing they often are to leave the company they're investing in alone. And with Morhaime and likely some other big Blizzard names, that's quite a bit of confidence from investors that they know what they're doing and will be able to delivery meaningful returns without the investors needing to be deeply involved.

Cool - I honestly thought that a giant like Valve was owned by shareholders(had to look it up). Maybe there is hope then.

Yep, nobody knows for sure but Gaben is very likely a billionaire. Valve is just a really, really, really weird company. For how massive Steam is, they have a relatively small company - around 350 people. That's folks running Steam, supporting live-service games like Dota 2, hardware projects like the Index, and what are likely thousands of software/hardware projects that went nowhere and never saw the light of day. Plus things like the Steam Controller/Link/"Steam Machines" (partnerships) which all went kinda nowhere.

[Arewn]

Until they release an actual game, this means nothing to me. Names of Blizzard devs hold no weight as far as I'm concerned. You can talk about how it's all the shareholders fault til you're blue in the face, but it doesn't change their track record until we've seen otherwise.

[Daronokk]

Since investors want a profit, and profit comes from pleasing as many customers as possible

That is only one way to gain profit, one that worked in a time long gone. Back in the good days.

Another way is through other means like microtransactions, paid DLC's, skins, lootboxes, you name it. You know, the cancer of the industry today.

[rhorle]

I didn't say they'd be amazing games, I said it would preserve their vision. WoW is better than it was back then in some ways, and worse in other ways, its a give and take. It will likely means things will be a little less nicke-and-dimed, however, which sounds great.

Again Blizzard has produced all of their games under a corporate owner. The name of the studio changed to Blizzard Entertainment after being acquired by Davidson & Associates. Being owned has by a corporation has little to do with being allowed to have a vision or not. It all depends on what is allowed and how much freedom is given. Plenty of studios have been given pretty large freedoms to create. Bioware and EA are one such example even if Bioware is likely under short reigns due to a string of let downs.

[sam86]

They don't have to compete with huge companies like Activision and EA. Tons of indie and mid-sized developers see plenty of great success in their respective categories.

I don't mean to be shitty, but this is kinda like, a fictionalized take on reality that's not reflective of the actual gaming market.

How long indie companies last tbh before being bought?
The idea of them stay free forever is fictional, yes they won't compete today or tomorrow but they will have to one day

[Edge-]

How long indie companies last tbh before being bought?

As long as they are independently financially secure and choose to remain independent. Valve has been around since 1996 and they're still a private company. Plenty of others like Supergiant Games have been turning out fantastic indie titles for years, and while they get publisher backing and big interest remain independent.

Hell, Yager Development has been around since 1999 and they too are still independent and making games. Even got minority investment from Tencent for future projects so they can remain independent.

The idea of them stay free forever is fictional, yes they won't compete today or tomorrow but they will have to one day

It's literally not. They will never have to compete against Activision or Ubisoft or EA or Sony if they don't want to. They're not going to go after smaller/mid-sized games to try to stamp those out. The profit margins in it simply aren't there compared to titles like COD/AC/Uncharted, and those titles pose no threat whatsoever to their core businesses so they don't even have a strategic reason to try to run them out of business. They may dabble with smaller games from time to time, but that's an entirely separate matter unrelated to direct competition with small/mid-sized developers.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

It's literally not.

You can dream all you want of being that guy who runs a privately owned game studio who won't ever sellout to those greedy shareholders... but eventually, one day, you're going to want to move with your life and retire, and those shareholders - or a bigger company - is going to wave a ton of money in front of your face. Money that can be used for your grandchildren to buy them a house to move into when they get married.

And you're going to take it.

Everyone sells out eventually.

[kaminaris]

good luck with that. you can tell with a single look if a game is using unity/unreal

I always find this argument amusing because that is literally furthest from the truth possible. You can tell that only if they are using some common assets, shaders included.

Game engines like unity or unreal are not restricting you when it comes to visuals. its not RPG maker lol.

[Darkeon]

Cautiously optimistic with their views.

But perhaps way too early to be able to tell if it's genuine or PR.

[rhorle]

Everyone sells out eventually.

Sure. But that isn't what is being discussed. Small game studios are not required to sell out to bigger ones in order to compete. If they have a good portfolio they can if they want to. But they are not by any means required to and could theoretically take their IP to the grave if they wanted to. The estate would likely sell out but there is nothing special about game design that requires everyone to sell to the bigger fish.

[Cæli]

I always find this argument amusing because that is literally furthest from the truth possible. You can tell that only if they are using some common assets, shaders included.

Game engines like unity or unreal are not restricting you when it comes to visuals. its not RPG maker lol.

ok let me rephrase; you can tell in most cases of games using unity/unreal that they are using those
and personally, I'd be curious to see a screen capture of a game derived from unity/unreal that doesn't look like the standard rendering

maybe the indie scene producing thousands of awful games and demos is responsible for giving unity/unreal a "bad name", with poorly worked rendering
but that's just a reality sadly

[Alatie]

All I know is that they will be creating games with zero profits in mind and reinvent the business as we know it.

Well yeah money wont be on Mike his mind after selling Blizzard i am sure he is rolling in it.