by raimue on 9/23/20, 1:20 PM with 155 comments
by Danieru on 9/23/20, 2:47 PM
Morhaime has now left the company he helped found, and one he sold off eons ago. Now stepping into a new vessel he gets to sell a bit less equity this time around and bring along the cream of his leadership team. No doubt he funded the initial paperwork out of his own pocket, but soon accepted one of the flood of investment offers.
It is an old play book yet no one talks about it when the play succeeds. Remember that falling out Martin O'Donnell had with Bungie? Did you notice how Martin moved on to found his own studio, one which successfully shipped a non-trivial game? Now not only does he get all the creative control he wanted, but even all of the financial upside.
Video games are so successful even those people getting pushed out of the "golden castle" have the skills and connections to build their own castle. No doubt this would change if games were not such a quick growing industry, but we've maintained that growth for a couple decades now.
This I think leads back to a fan favorite topic: unionization in games. For the opposite reason one might think: those successful enough to be "too important too lose" for studios are more likely setup new studios before they ever spend their political capital on unionization. This leaves the suits, who by definition are incapable of setting a studio, and the "bulk of the creative team".
Hollywood could unionize because no matter how famous no star alone is capable of walking out the door to make a new studio. Thus the stars and more importantly directors saw the studios as overlords, not future peers. Games does not have that, and it is a core problem the games unionization movement needs to figure out a solution to.
by saberience on 9/23/20, 3:24 PM
Mike left Blizzard some months before the layoffs were announced and the general conclusion was that Mike was told by Bobby Kotick that he had to do the layoffs or leave Blizzard, and hence Mike ended up resigning.
His resignation email said all the same stuff like "Mike wanting to spend more time with family" etc etc. But now it's fairly clear that was all crap, he still wanted to run a games company, he just wanted to be free from Activision and their general heavy handed management and manipulation of Blizzard.
by mewse-hn on 9/23/20, 3:30 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G6oRuu9tLg
The short version is Blizzard is a shell of their former glory, and they are making decisions based on cash and appeasement of the Chinese govt. Most of you probably remember the Diablo: Immortal reception (Chinese mobile game presented as a keynote at the American, PC-playing blizzcon fan convention).
I deeply hope Morhaime is able to recapture the lightning in a bottle that existed at old Blizzard, and this doesn't end up as another Hellgate: London fiasco.
by munificent on 9/23/20, 3:46 PM
Sounds like the typical expiration date for a non-compete, so I assume they've been planning to do this for some time.
Let's hope it works out. In this era of constant consolidation, I'm always happy to see new companies spring up.
by jimbob45 on 9/23/20, 2:41 PM
The above is a fairly interesting flowchart detailing where all of the core employees moved on to after leaving Blizzard. Some have met success, most have folded.
To me, the only employee that ever mattered was Chris Metzen. He was the one who developed the core of all of their stories and personally approved every quest in WoW. If you're going to try to get players to emotionally connect to characters and story arcs, I would think that the writer would be the best place to figure out how.
by jagger27 on 9/23/20, 2:45 PM
by Sawamara on 9/23/20, 4:41 PM
by duxup on 9/23/20, 3:06 PM
We see a lot of "core member of great thing founds own thing" and you really want to see them succeed but having an organization succeed takes a a lot of people with lots of different skills. I'm not convinced that any given jumble of highly talented folks actually produce something if we somehow ran a but of iterations of "jumble of highly talented folks".
I've heard plenty of stories of such folks going their own way to be stopped by basic business type problems like project management, just managing people, maintaining focus, raising money and keeping investors happy, etc.
by markbnine on 9/23/20, 2:42 PM
by rurounijones on 9/23/20, 10:56 PM
* To players it sounds like a typical company stuido name. Quite nice
* To current and ex-blizzard staff it is a beacon call. "Come and dream again here"
* To Activision management it seems like a bit of an insult in that Blizzard was no longer a place where you could dream.
But maybe I am reading too much into it.
by __s on 9/23/20, 5:33 PM
It lets you see him relaxing as a pretty chill guy. He really cares about creating good games
One of the insightful remarks he made was that StarCraft was easier to balance than WarCraft because it had so much more asymmetry
by jug on 9/23/20, 8:43 PM
It was apparently Morhaime who gave us Diablo 3 fans the scraps of the cancelled second expansion as free content update as pure fan service. Without these and the concepts they introduced, Diablo 3 would have lacked major end game features essential for its longevity like Greater Rifts and Kanai's Cube. He truly understood the importance of gamer relations and from others it sounds like he has a big gaming heart.
by zemo on 9/23/20, 6:18 PM
by Thaxll on 9/23/20, 3:07 PM
by lorthemar on 9/23/20, 6:22 PM
by bird_monster on 9/24/20, 3:50 AM
If Dreamhaven creates successful, enjoyable games the answer will be clear.
by dang on 9/23/20, 6:52 PM
by oneng on 9/24/20, 1:26 AM
by tus88 on 9/23/20, 9:21 PM
by eointierney on 9/24/20, 12:16 AM
by dang on 9/23/20, 6:51 PM
There's also https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2020/09/23/mike-m....
by manas1 on 9/23/20, 6:29 PM