Sep 18, 2024

Image Credit: Dreamhaven GamesBeat Next is connecting the next generation of video game leaders. And you can join us, coming up October 28th and 29th in San Francisco! Take advantage of our buy one, get one free pass offer. Sale ends this Friday, August 16th. Join us by registering here . Mike Morhaime , cofounder of Blizzard, started Dreamhaven to take a new crack at building an awesome game company. And while the company is working on its own games, it’s also become a publisher and plans to release Lynked: Banner of the Spark , from a new studio called FuzzyBot . The title looks pretty whimsical, but a lot of eyes will be on it, as Morhaime was a legendary figure in games industry has one of the cofounders of Blizzard Entertainment , maker of games like World of Warcraft, Diablo and Overwatch. He and his wife Amy Morhaime left Blizzard in 2018 after it had become a big corporate entity as part of Activision Blizzard. And as of last year, it’s now part of Microsoft. Not yet finished with games, the Morhaimes set up Dreamhaven in Irvine, California, and established two new game studios: Moonshot and Secret Door. They’ve been pretty quiet until now. Morhaime, CEO of Dreamhaven, talked about the new game in an interview with me. The launch of the Lynked game was a good excuse to catch up with Morhaime on how the vision for the company is turning out. Our conversation wandered into areas where Morhaime’s wisdom and those of his top leaders could turn out to be valuable for people weathering gaming’s current storm. Join us for GamesBeat Next! GamesBeat Next is connecting the next generation of video game leaders. And you can join us, coming up October 28th and 29th in San Francisco! Take advantage of our buy one, get one free pass offer. Sale ends this Friday, August 16th. Join us by registering here . “We haven’t been talking to anybody. We’ve just been heads down trying to build the company and build a couple of games,” he said. Mike Morhaime is CEO of Dreamhaven. As to the original vision of Dreamhaven, Morhaime said, “The original idea was we wanted to build a game company that fostered an environment that where people can be innovative and creative and not really hampered and restricted by some of the corporate pressures that you some sometimes feel at bigger companies.” He added that they wanted to “capture that entrepreneurial, small company environment, while at the same time having access to more resources and talent than you would have as a standalone startup.” For the last four years, the company has been running two internal studios, Moonshot Games and Secret Door. Meanwhile, the company picked up its publishing capability through its central team, and it has formed relationships with about a dozen external independent game developers. The first out of the gate is FuzzyBot. “Lynked is a lot of fun, it’s innovative, and we’re excited to help share it with players around the world,” said Morhaime. “We’re thrilled that our debut publishing partnership is in support of the great team at FuzzyBot—Tatyana, Max, and the rest of the studio are pouring their hearts into this game, and we’ve been steadily impressed with their focus, care, and creativity. We can’t wait to see what players think when the early access release launches next month.” Lynked: Banner of the Spark Lynked is a roguelite set in a world of robots. Set in a world of robots, Lynked gives each player their own town, which they’ll expand by going on missions to collect necessary resources and blueprints—and rescue Unibot allies—in enemy territory. It is an arcade-inspired co-op action game where playing together goes beyond the run. Players will team up, brawl, and build a town in this blend of hack-and-slash combat, roguelite mechanics, and town-building progression. “It’s a co-op action hack and slash game with roguelite missions,” Morhaime said. “We’ve been following the development of this game for quite a while, and we were having a lot of fun playing it. And so when they started looking for a publisher, we raised our hand.” As challenges increase, the player’s town will be the key to getting the upper hand in combat. Players will pair up with their robot friends to craft, upgrade, and build new armaments that will improve survivability on subsequent runs—in addition to providing fun options for personalizing their home. Up to five additional players can help tend to the host player’s town, and players can venture out on missions individually or in teams of up to three as they confront the Combot menace threatening the world. One to three players can play it. It has generated encounters and in-run upgrades, but the structure of the loop is very different. Lynked: Banner of the Spark uses a mission-based structure to change up the rules, difficulty, playtime, and rewards of each run. Lynked also features unique game mechanics through the Wyre, which players use to grapple enemies in combat and free robot allies. The game debuts for early access on Steam on October 22 for $25, and that makes it Dreamhaven’s first game to hit the market. You can now wishlist now on Steam. It will be released in English, French, German, Italian, European Spanish, Latin American Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese. The full launched is expected in 2025. Lynked is going into early access on October 22. FuzzyBot was funded in 2020 as a small and versatile studio hoping to connect players across generations through cooperative experiences set in imaginative worlds. Its seasoned team brings decades of expertise in multiplayer action from studios such as Ubisoft, Bungie, and Electronic Arts. Their development philosophy is around dreaming big but building smart—maintaining a pragmatic, flexible, and down-to- earth approach focused on shipping games featuring innovative mechanics and eye-catching aesthetics. As for finding the external game studios, Morhaime said, “First and foremost, we wanted to have confidence in the leadership of the of the studios, and so we were looking at the leadership’s capabilities. Were they capable of delivering on the things that they’re trying to do? Were they pursuing a vision that was inspiring to us? And did we feel like we might be in a position to offer some help?” Dreamhaven’s role How Dreamhaven is structured. Dreamhaven is serving as a close partner to FuzzyBot, helping them realize their vision for Lynked. Both companies share an ethos of dreaming big and building smart, with a commitment to delivering fun experiences that bring players together. “Dreamhaven’s support has been a breath of fresh air as we bring Lynked: Banner of the Spark to players,” said Tatyana Dyshlova, CEO and cofounder of FuzzyBot, in a statement. “There are many options out there, and Dreamhaven stood out with its experienced leadership, their belief and expertise in building strong relationships with players, and their commitment to creating a positive developer/publisher relationship. They understand the craftsmanship behind making great games, and this comes across in their collaborative and supportive partnership.” Morhaime said the company has been busy building its central team and publishing capabilities. It also created its partner studio program, which is a little unique. “The way that works is Dreamhaven made small investments in these companies and we basically make ourselves available to them for advice and guidance as they navigate the the complex journey of building games and building game companies,” Morhaime said. “We knew we wanted to publish our own internal games, but we also had aspirations to look for a few externally developed games that we might be able to publish.” Jason Chayes is studio head at Moonshot. Chris Sigaty, Alan Dabiri, and Eric Dodds are the cofounders of Secret Door. I also spoke with Jason Chayes, Moonshot studio head, and Dustin Browder, game director at Moonshot. When they all started, they knew Morhaime well but didn’t have any idea what games they would make. They’ve gone through a process of figuring that out and are now making two very different games. Most of the titles in the works are PC and console games. The team is much bigger than Blizzard was in its early days, Morhaime said, as there was no publishing team on board. “We’re in a fortunate position at Dreamhaven to have industry veterans leading all of our efforts that have been in gaming — some of them a couple of decades,” he said. “That is very different.” I asked what kind of market we’re in when a game like Concord can be in the works as a game-as-a-service for eight years and then it fails in 11 days after it launches. Such news hasn’t changed the path that the company is on, Morhaime said. “We decided what type of games that that we’re going to be building, and then our focus has really been on building out those games and iterating on on what we have,” he said. “Of course, we, you know, we pay attention to what’s happening in the market. We play a lot of different games, and we try to to learn about shifts and changes in the market, and that might influence how we bring the games to market.” Moonshot’s growth Morhaime asked Chayes to chime in. “We’ve been chasing the same game concept that Dustin and I decided on going back to the beginning of 2020,” Chayes said. “I think that technology has continued to change very quickly, and expectations for what a modern game looks like have continued to evolve in the last four years. So we’re definitely very cognizant of that, and we want to be thinking about those as we’re figuring out our development plan.” As to trends, Chayes said it’s good to focus on the memorable moments that you have with friends and how you can make more of that happen. During the past four years, Moonshot has grown to about 50 people now. “We arrived at that number, not by chance. We arrived at that number based off the type of studio we wanted to build, the types of games we wanted to make, and the type of culture that comes from those things,” Chayes said. “We’ve had the fortune of being on very small teams.” He said his team benefited from being small, but it was good to be supported by a larger organization. “That is one of the learnings we’ve taken with us forward into Dreamhaven, where we can actually have a team that’s very focused on making the best possible game, like what Mike was talking about earlier, and using some of the central services that come from publishing, from analytics, from our platform team. We have the benefit of all that without necessarily bringing all that into the studio.” Surviving in the game industry Lynked: Banner of the Spark I pointed out how tough things are now. Morhaime said that making games has always been very competitive, and only the ones at the top are financially successful. Yet they also realize that there has never been a time in history when games were more popular. The industry will grow, the future is bright, and the business is strong. But it will remain competitive, Morhaime said. “To be successful, you have to break through and stand out from the pack,” he said. Chayes said, “I do think it’s important to get alignment on values. If I think about as a developer and the funding source, right? Chayes said that while looking for funding, the team knew that it had a decade or more of experience of working with Morhaime, and they knew his values. It’s important to have that alignment. Browder said that having Morhaime around for the second company was important. His team had seen Morhaime and others work under pressure and make difficult decisions that they agreed with. Browder said, “You want to know that you’re aligned with them and you’re going to understand and know why they’re making the decisions. That’s so very valuable. It’s been true for the 30 years I’ve been doing it. It’s very uncertain and there’s a lot of fear as a result of that uncertainty. It’s difficult for developers, leaders, anybody whose livelihood depends on this crazy business to remain focused, remain calm and make smart rational choices in the face of so much uncertainty.” Morhaime, he noted, is pretty fearless. And Morhaime said the good thing this time around was that Dreamhaven never had to go out on a roadshow to raise money. Rather, it was able to raise the funds it needed while still maintaining control of the company. Finding a focus It pays to be bold in gaming. Moonshot will be focused on multiplayer experiences, but it’s not talking about the kind of game it is working on yet. Browder came from StarCraft while Chayes worked on Hearthstone, and there are leadership people who came from Overwatch. All of those things will be influences, Browder said. “We believe that there’s a rich world of things we’d like to keep on building on,” Chayes said. “I do think where we want to keep on expanding about doing new things is back to this idea of stories you can remember with your friends and kind of weave that in with those competitive experiences. And so we’re excited to share more on what that’s going to look like as we get closer to to the announcing our game.” Morhaime said he doesn’t think the industry’s path will be super easy. But he said, “I think there’s bright days ahead for the industry. Game development is never easy. But I think as gamers, I think there are bright days ahead. I think the industry is poised to continue growing and reaching more people around the world. And I think that that’s, that’s a positive for the industry as well. So there’s tons of opportunity out there.” Chayes said, “I totally agree as well. One thing I will say about just the state of games today is there is still an amazing diversity of types of games you can play. And so even though the industry has gone through a very rough patch over the last couple of years, and we know people have been deeply affected by that, I will say that the types of games that are out there that are getting people to play them, and significant numbers of players, is one of the most diverse types of sets of experiences.” That is, there are weird and crazy games out there that people are finding and loving and celebrating. Chayes said that are lot of the studio enjoys playing tabletop RPGs. “I bring in my unwanted board games and leave them on tables, and they disappear pretty quickly, which is always kind of wonderful,” Chayes said. There are fans of games like Space Marine 2 to Baldur’s Gate 3 and just about everything else too. Redoing Blizzard or another path? Mike Morhaime is retiring from Blizzard after 27 years. I asked Morhaime if he had a thought about rebuilding Blizzard or doing something different. “We wanted to take the leverage the experience that we had. Blizzard was an amazing journey. I think we we all learned a ton. And if you look at the leadership of both of these internal studios, there’s decades of experience making games. They don’t need a ton of micromanagement,” Morhaime said. “What they need is a central team that is here to support them and help them to be successful. They’re going to end up making games and they’re going to do the work. But there’s a lot that goes into taking that game and bringing it to market.” That’s where publishers come in. “Just having the infrastructure of a company that can support them and allow them to focus on the things they need to focus on to make the best game,” Morhaime added. “We view it as a partnership, where we each have our own roles to play. But ultimately, you know, success comes down to how good are the games, and are we able to to find an audience that enjoys them?” Morhaime is still a straight shooter. I said it must feel good to have a second chance to build something. “Yeah, it’s exciting and it’s a bit scary as well,” he replied. And he also said, “The thing that inspires us is magic. It’s the idea that games can bring people together in positive ways and and so we’re building games in general that you can share with your friends and family. All we can do is build games that we’re excited to play ourselves. We think that if we love the game, there are a lot of other people out there that will also love them.” VB Daily