Five years ago, when Mike and Amy Morhaime founded Dreamhaven, I had the opportunity to discuss their vision for the company with several founding members. Their goal was to establish a sustainable publishing and support pillar for game studios, including the two they were launching at the time, Moonshot and Secret Door, as well as other chosen partners.
At the conclusion of our interview, Mike Morhaime shared an ambitious goal for the new company:
"We want, if I may be so bold as to say, to be a beacon to the industry," he stated, referencing 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 founded, the gaming industry saw a surge in studios led by former AAA leaders, all promising a more sustainable future. However, the subsequent years brought challenges such as a global pandemic, economic instability, widespread layoffs, studio closures, and project cancellations. Many of these visionary studios either shut down before launching their projects or deferred their dreams indefinitely.
Not Dreamhaven. Today, Dreamhaven partnered with The Game Awards for its first-ever showcase, presenting an impressive lineup of four 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 focused on space heists (which we've already previewed!). The other two games, developed externally but published and supported by Dreamhaven, include Lynked: Banner of the Spark, an action-RPG from LA-based developer FuzzyBot, already available in early access with a full 1.0 launch planned for 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 engaging over the long term.
This marks a significant achievement for a relatively new games company, but Dreamhaven's ambitions don't stop there. The company is also supporting ten other external studios, many founded and staffed by former AAA developers, through various means such as investments, consultancy, and fundraising support. While this sometimes includes publishing assistance, it's not always the case. At the Game Developers Conference (GDC) last week, Mike Morhaime explained that Dreamhaven's goal from the start 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 said. "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, discussions revolved around the ongoing industry crisis, with many attributing it to the prioritization of profits over all else, resulting in cancellations, closures, and layoffs. When asked about the tension between craft and business, Morhaime believes they are not mutually exclusive. However, he emphasized the importance of allowing room 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 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 key lesson he learned 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 approach at Blizzard and his current one 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 shifted to new technologies, particularly the controversial topic of generative AI. While many gamers and developers are wary of this technology, numerous AAA companies are already implementing it. Morhaime acknowledges Dreamhaven's cautious approach, using AI only for research on best practices and internal policy drafting, not 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."
Turning to a less controversial topic, the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2, I noted that Sunderfolk and Lynked are slated for release on the Switch, while Mechabellum remains Steam-exclusive due to its genre. Interestingly, Wildgate did not include the Switch in its multi-platform announcement. Morhaime remained tight-lipped about this but shared his 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 asked Morhaime if Dreamhaven has achieved the mission he outlined five years ago. Is Dreamhaven a "beacon to the industry"? Morhaime believes they're not there yet. They need to release their games and gauge the response from players and the industry.
"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."
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