About Dreamhaven

[Edge-]

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.

You got a date when Gaben sells out, bro?

Morhaime is already rich, dude can retire anytime he wants and he's set for life. Same with Gaben, who has an estimated net worth of, I apologize for being wrong about this earlier, it's not $1B.

His net worth is around $4B - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabe_Newell

[Val the Moofia Boss]

You got a date when Gaben sells out, bro?

Morhaime is already rich, dude can retire anytime he wants and he's set for life. Same with Gaben, who has an estimated net worth of, I apologize for being wrong about this earlier, it's not $1B.

His net worth is around $4B - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabe_Newell

So what? George Lucas had a ton of money and still sold Star Wars when he lost interest and have another 4 billion waved in front of him. Gabe will cash out eventually.

[Edge-]

So what? George Lucas had a ton of money and still sold Star Wars when he lost interest and have another 4 billion waved in front of him. Gabe will cash out eventually.

Alright, and? All we're really establishing here is that it's not "inevitable" and that if someone wants to cash the fuck out they can and will. You generally don't start up a passion project with the intent of selling it off, and there's no reason why Morhaime would do so unless he wanted to.

I swear, gamers are one of the most cynical and deeply suspicious/mistrustful fandoms around. It's weird that we seem to always think so little and poorly about the people that make the games we enjoy and are passionate about.

[Zyky]

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

There's a HUGE difference, none of what you mentioned was public knowledge nor was any of it officially announced. 80% of the content announced by Blizzard in an official setting for WoD was cut.

[MoanaLisa]

Time will tell if Dreamhaven is really going to make a go of things or whether it's a bunch of rich but very successful hobbyists playing at business. For those hoping for an MMO title it's very likely you'll have a long wait: 2025 or 2026 at a minimum since five years is about what it takes to properly develop launch content plus stuff the pipe for later releases.

If Dreamhaven wants to do something in the next year or so chances are good that it will be a mobile title. Easier to develop and flesh out and a very large customer base. If that's how they go early on I anxiously await the reaction from users here and elsewhere. Reality would suggest that it will be a year or so before anything is announced and more years after that before anything approaching an early Blizzard title would be released for PC.

I do wish them the best of luck because the talent is there to develop good games and there are few enough of those around. The flip side of that is that all of these people have been in the business for decades and may be stuck in their ways to the point where something truly innovative (and risky) is beyond them. I guess while I'm at it I'll mention that Kaplan leaving is not really a surprise. Once Morhaime left and a new executive team took over it was foretold that the most of the original hires would assess their future options.

I don't know if this is going to be good or bad for Blizzard. If some younger developers/designers move up and they're really hungry it might be much better for Blizzard that the top layers of management have moved on. You don't expect people who have been designing games for 20+ years to be innovative.

[DesoPL]

You got a date when Gaben sells out, bro?

Morhaime is already rich, dude can retire anytime he wants and he's set for life. Same with Gaben, who has an estimated net worth of, I apologize for being wrong about this earlier, it's not $1B.

His net worth is around $4B - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabe_Newell

You want to say, Morhaime want become second Gabe? I think world is not ready for that.

[Cosmic Janitor]

You want to say, Morhaime want become second Gabe? I think world is not ready for that.

I very much doubt he would be able to open up a store and give up on game development in the current market.

[Kallisto]

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

Then it will fail. Zero profit in mind means it'll take losses, bleed money and close. Every business is about making as much money as possible, paying as little as possible.

Sometimes it has a pr guy that makes it look like jesus but deep down every businessman from the mega Corp ceo to the guy running the mom and pop store wants your money, wants to make as much as possible and deep down is what Star Trek ferengi are based on.

[kaminaris]

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

Because it usually requires you to place splash screen, otherwise you can't. Again, those engines have literally zero restriction of how to render stuff.
You can literally make game look like 100% WoW in Unreal. People simply chose not to.

And no, it doesn't give them bad name. Engine is just engine, what you do with it is another story. You don't blame tool manufacturers for repair crew fuckups.

[VinceVega]

I've been seeing a lot of replies in "Blizzard employee leaves" threads about Dreamhaven. I know it's Mike Morhaime's new company and that's pretty cool, but I went on their website and there wasn't a lot of information in regards to games their studios are making or anything.

Do they have any projects in the works that they've made public or are they still like brand new? Also what former Blizz employees have moved over there out of curiosity?

I don't think we will hear anything from them in the next few years. Getting a studio running takes time. He doesn't want big shareholders who get to influence anything in the company so funding is most definetly a problem. YOu need the people. The idea. And the work.

I don't think they will show anything until maybe 2025 or even later.

[BrintoSFJ]

No, so far they have announced nothing. Not even a vague hint at any possible genre or setting. All we know is "it's old Blizzard people" and that's it. Nothing on what they might work on.

They are working on strategy games. It is written on their site.

[Cosmic Janitor]

They are working on strategy games. It is written on their site.

I can't find that, but I can see on their job listing that they look for people that know about unity. So at least for secret door this question has been answered.

[Azerate]

They'll probably start making match-3 mobile games and earn billions like that

[Cæli]

Because it usually requires you to place splash screen, otherwise you can't. Again, those engines have literally zero restriction of how to render stuff.
You can literally make game look like 100% WoW in Unreal. People simply chose not to.

And no, it doesn't give them bad name. Engine is just engine, what you do with it is another story. You don't blame tool manufacturers for repair crew fuckups.

I've learned that people often have a weird definition of what "looks like" a given game. some people would say wow looks like fortnite. wow looks more like banjo kazooie 64 in hd than fortnite.

I don't believe that wow can be made exactly the same in unreal. not for a second. show me and I'll believe you. there's always an ugly bloom effect or something that lets us know we're on unity/unreal.

[mrgreenthump]

I wouldn't expect anything for a looong time. For example Bonfire Studios(old Blizzard people) was found in 2016 and we've heard 0 on what they are doing.

[lagiacrux]

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

prominent games made with unity3d

- hearthstone
- cuphead
- cities skyline
- subnautica
- risk of rain 2
- hollow night

there is even a wiki entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unity_games

your personal bias does not live up to the real world.

[kaminaris]

I've learned that people often have a weird definition of what "looks like" a given game. some people would say wow looks like fortnite. wow looks more like banjo kazooie 64 in hd than fortnite.

I don't believe that wow can be made exactly the same in unreal. not for a second. show me and I'll believe you. there's always an ugly bloom effect or something that lets us know we're on unity/unreal.

You can, end of story. You can write entire shared code without restrictions as well as import assets including textures.
https://www.therookies.co/entries/7431

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeReKydPrBU
+ update shader/lightning code and you will have it

Before you try to write some response, no, you can.
Just because nobody did 1:1 clone with some super old lightning model and archaic shaders doesn't mean its not possible, it is.
I fiddled with unity.

[Cæli]

prominent games made with unity3d

- hearthstone
- cuphead
- cities skyline
- subnautica
- risk of rain 2
- hollow night

there is even a wiki entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unity_games

your personal bias does not live up to the real world.

it's too easy to make awfully cheap looking games with unity it seems, and the 3d games you listed seems to proves my point. it might be an art style decision though for risk of rain and subnautica, to have this kind of lightning or poor texturing. look at playtonics which is mostly made by the old rare. their games doesn't look like a rare game, it looks like a unity game. go figure...

- - - Updated - - -

You can, end of story. You can write entire shared code without restrictions as well as import assets including textures.
https://www.therookies.co/entries/7431

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeReKydPrBU
+ update shader/lightning code and you will have it

Before you try to write some response, no, you can.
Just because nobody did 1:1 clone with some super old lightning model and archaic shaders doesn't mean its not possible, it is.
I fiddled with unity.

ok maybe, but do you realize at least that the rendering of wow in the end of the video doesn't looks like wow? it looks like...wow in unity

it has a similar feel than the "therookie" link you showed, with a landscape that looks quite cheap/unity like. maybe it's the default "shader". point is most of games made by unity look soulless and I don't think it's an accident.

[kaminaris]

ok maybe, but do you realize at least that the rendering of wow in the end of the video doesn't looks like wow? it looks like...wow in unity

it has a similar feel than the "therookie" link you showed, with a landscape that looks quite cheap/unity like. maybe it's the default "shader". point is most of games made by unity look soulless and I don't think it's an accident.

Read what I wrote, fully. Response is already there. By the way those default shaders are better than wow ones.

[Cæli]

Read what I wrote, fully. Response is already there. By the way those default shaders are better than wow ones.

what I meant by not looking like wow was that it looked worse; it looks cheap. I recognize that some people would prefer a cheap engine render like the one in the video rather than the warm and unique artstyle you can see in classic wow, but the issue is taste in this case for me; I think bad taste is the reason we have so many cheap games that no one care about on steam, also the reason why we have more and more soulless successful games. but it might actually be a blessing, because otherwise we wouldn't have time to play everything

still, dreamhaven shall pay attention to what their games looks like, and if it looks like unity/unreal "defaults look", I'm afraid they won't go as far as some would expect