About Dreamhaven

[keelr]

All we know is it has two studios and its apparently meant to focus on "fun first, not pleasing shareholders" which combined with the name is about as on the nose as it gets.

its funny but this "fun first, not pleasing shareholders" is just a made-up thing. They never said anything like this, but ex-blizz players who hate on blizzard often think that they lost interest in Blizzard games because of "greedy Activision". I understand that activision is greedy (well Ikea and Wallmart and Amazon and Tesla and whatever company you can think is greedy since you are either greedy or you arent in business) but thats huge BS and i can't believe it that people quit wow because there is a store mount, c'mon ppl can make up better than that. So these people have a good and a bad, and they marked Acti-Blizz as the bad who work for money only and they think of the new company Mike made as their white knight who will give away amazing games without greed. Well, lets see what happens when they get bored of their new games.

[Zelk]

I don't have any inside knowledge but I'd be very surprised if they made games on the same scale as Blizzard do. I'd expect smaller dev teams and smaller games because making stuff like Wow is probably exhausting after a few years.

[Edge-]

Only if you're not successful or an established company. Growing companies often don't pay their shareholders anything.

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.

[Kathranis]

They've got two studios, one looks like it's probably more indie-leaning while the other is more AAA-leaning.

Teams are both still pretty small (20 or fewer employees) and obviously no details on what they're making, if they even have projects under way yet. They might still be in the blue sky concepting phase, given that they don't seem to have any high level game/design positions listed yet. Just engineering and concepting for the most part, not directors and whatnot.

[HansOlo]

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.

Naive.

If anybody believes that people works for free and to please some geeks of the world...

You can't simple survive as company who wants to get out to millions - as the big boys also owns other medias that you are depending on.

[Cæli]

if they don't do their own graphical engine, and use unity/unreal instead, they won't reach big success I think. that stands true also if they try to emulate the graphical rendering of unity/unreal engine.

[Deferionus]

If you think, Dreamheaven will be new Blizzard. You're definetly wrong... People said this about Riot Games sometime ago.

Riot has put out better quality than Blizzard the last 5 years, but I would not call them the "new Blizzard." They only have one established IP that they are just starting to make other titles for and have a new IP they are trying to make. Blizzard spend several decades building their Diablo, Warcraft, and Starcraft IPs.

Now in 5 years we can look at this. Riot is making a MMORPG based on League and have other titles in the pipe. I personally think it will be a successful MMO though it may not be for everyone.

Dreamhaven has a long road ahead and will likely produce small RTS/RPG titles that establish their own intellectual properties. I doubt they come out with a large project like a MMO out the gate. Even something large as Skyrim would be pushing it for a new studio without anything established.

[Edge-]

If anybody believes that people works for free and to please some geeks of the world...

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

You can't simple survive as company who wants to get out to millions - as the big boys also owns other medias that you are depending on.

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.

[cuafpr]

yeah till i see a product i'm not on the hype train for Dreamhaven or any other former blizz employee studio. the cynical part of me would laugh if the first thing they make is a mobile game seeing how people here react to mobile gaming lol

[shise]

Since investors want a profit, and profit comes from pleasing as many customers as possible, DH seems to be wanting to please fewer people. This suggests that customer satisfaction isn't really what they're aiming for. Why should I, a potential customer, be encouraged by this?

It is the oposite.

Popular things are bad.

Popular music, popular games.. they please a large number of people because the quality is.. well, mediocre.

It is best to please less players with a specific high quality that not everyone will like.

THAT is how WoW became so good that even now, with these retards running it, we still play it.

[Sanguinerd]

With nothing announced both Dreamhaven and Bonfire games are still years away ;/ why even get excited already?

It could be 10 years before anything even releases... still it cant be worse than getting hyped for Star Citizen

[Ealyssa]

Since investors want a profit, and profit comes from pleasing as many customers as possible, DH seems to be wanting to please fewer people. This suggests that customer satisfaction isn't really what they're aiming for. Why should I, a potential customer, be encouraged by this?

Because not everyone want to eat McDonalds, which are factually pleasing hundreds of millions of people.
We ratter get good cuisine.

But nothing wrong with your BigMac if that's what you like best.

[Cosmic Janitor]

if they don't do their own graphical engine, and use unity/unreal instead, they won't reach big success I think. that stands true also if they try to emulate the graphical rendering of unity/unreal engine.

What? You can do all kinds of shit in UE, that reaches from 2D sprites over cellshading to full blown 3D with ray tracing and photorealistic textures. The engine will only be a practical concern for them, but I doubt it will make or break their games.

[Edge-]

What? You can do all kinds of shit in UE, that reaches from 2D sprites over cellshading to full blown 3D with ray tracing and photorealistic textures. The engine will only be a practical concern for them, but I doubt it will make or break their games.

And Unity just got raytracing support too. Sure, in-house engines are more common nowadays, but there are fantastic third party engines that are quite affordable depending on the scale of the game they want to create. Not to mention that there are plenty of hugely successful games built on both of the most common engines (UE/Unity) so neither is really limiting in any way if properly planned around.

[Queen of Hamsters]

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

[Cosmic Janitor]

And Unity just got raytracing support too. Sure, in-house engines are more common nowadays, but there are fantastic third party engines that are quite affordable depending on the scale of the game they want to create. Not to mention that there are plenty of hugely successful games built on both of the most common engines (UE/Unity) so neither is really limiting in any way if properly planned around.

If you aim for multiplatform 3rd party engines also come with way easier means of porting, wheres in-house will always require you to know the architecture of every system on a fundamental level. Especially as a new studio I don't see much benfit to start working on your own engine, unless you want to achieve something special (like very large scales, special details, physics, interactions, etc.) or you can justify it for subsequent projects. In-house might have an advantage if you want/need your own tools to make content or interact with the engine.

[sam86]

Which they don't have to take if they don't want to. They don't have investors now (at least none confirmed), and given everything Morheim has said it's unlikely they'd go with investors looking to get control of the company for a sale to someone like Activision.

They can absolutely keep it a private company if they want to, especially with Morheim's name running the ship.

sadly this isn't how rl works, if u want to see how rl works, check "Nightcrawler" movie (a masterpiece)
a small company can never have hope to face mega cooperations in brutal capitalism system that is global world economy right now, most consumer base IS casual ppl who only have 5 min to check for a new game to get their attention, and that 5 min is available only to pure evil companies like Activision & EA, hence why while they are hated by gamers, they are still 1st and 2nd top videogame companies because most ppl who play games don't bother to hunt news like us, but sit on their fat a88es wait for what media will feed them
Doom is one of most beloved video games of 2021 and it made a half of profit of Genshin Impact (or whatever its name) with at least twice its budget, because Doom is a clean video game like what we all gamers love, at least the developers can sleep with clean conscious?

[Edge-]

a small company can never have hope to face mega cooperations in brutal capitalism system that is global world economy right now, most consumer base IS casual ppl who only have 5 min to check for a new game to get their attention, and that 5 min is available only to pure evil companies like Activision & EA, hence why while they are hated by gamers, they are still 1st and 2nd top videogame companies because most ppl who play games don't bother to hunt news like us, but sit on their fat a88es wait for what media will feed them

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.

[Cæli]

What? You can do all kinds of shit in UE, that reaches from 2D sprites over cellshading to full blown 3D with ray tracing and photorealistic textures. The engine will only be a practical concern for them, but I doubt it will make or break their games.

good luck with that. you can tell with a single look if a game is using unity/unreal, just like you could recognize a game with a single screen capture back in the days. no longer. was just saying, it's not my company, I don't care that much if they don't succeed but how the game looks is not secondary, as some people think. it's as important as the gameplay, or maybe even more important maybe, as it is the looks that will primarily draw attention from people browsing the web/youtube.

if this looks like another one of those thousands game with the same graphics, they will start. wow stood out at the time in magazines and websites. you could recognize wow between a thousand game with the interface and characters removed.

[oplawlz]

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.

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

- - - Updated - - -

good luck with that. you can tell with a single look if a game is using unity/unreal, just like you could recognize a game with a single screen capture back in the days. no longer. was just saying, it's not my company, I don't care that much if they don't succeed but how the game looks is not secondary, as some people think. it's as important as the gameplay, or maybe even more important maybe, as it is the looks that will primarily draw attention from people browsing the web/youtube.

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