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September 24, 2020 02:02 am

Blizzard Co-Founder Mike Morhaime Launches New Gaming Endeavor Dreamhaven

Mike Morhaime, the cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment, has launched a new game company called Dreamhaven, and it has established two new game studios: Moonshot and Secret Door. VentureBeat reports: The Irvine, California-based company is a pretty good clue that Morhaime and his wife Amy Morhaime weren't quite done with games when they left Activision Blizzard in 2018. Mike will be the CEO of Dreamhaven, while Amy will head operations. They have hired a number of (mostly former Blizzard) industry veterans to help run their studios, which will work on separate games. That's an ambitious startup, as working on two games at once is a handful. But it's not without precedent, as Harold Ryan's Probably Monsters startup in Seattle also has two studios working on two games at once. What makes the Morhaimes' company unique so far is that they're funding it themselves. [...] So far, the company has 27 employees across all three entities, and it's hiring more staff. The artwork on the company's homepage combines aspects of both fantasy and science fiction, but the company isn't yet saying what games it is working on, nor is it talking about genres. But it is working on a familiar model, as it closely resembles the way Morhaime ran things at Blizzard, with an emphasis on quality, iteration, and giving creative staff enough time. The parent company's role is to provide guidance and funding, as well as central services that each studio will need, such as communications and human resources. But each studio will make its own decisions about how to make the best games, Morhaime said. The founders have equity in the parent company. Moonshot's leaders are Jason Chayes, Dustin Browder, and Ben Thompson. Chayes was previously an executive producer at Blizzard Entertainment, where he worked on the Hearthstone team. He also worked at Electronic Arts and Disney. Browder's 25-year career includes roles as the game director for StarCraft II, Heroes of the Storm, Command & Conquer, and The Lord of the Rings. Thompson's credits include creative director for Hearthstone and art director for the World of Warcraft trading card game, with additional credits on Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering. Moonshot is also home to a team of seasoned developers who've worked on some of gaming's most popular franchises. Dreamhaven's second game studio, Secret Door, has a leadership team of Chris Sigaty, Alan Dabiri, and Eric Dodds. Sigaty's roles have included executive producer on Hearthstone, StarCraft II, and Heroes of the Storm, as well as lead producer on the original Warcraft III. Dodds was the original game director of Hearthstone and veteran game designer on World of Warcraft and StarCraft. Dabiri has filled both technical director and game director roles and has worked on Warcraft III, StarCraft II, and Heroes of the Storm. Sigaty was at Blizzard for almost 24 years, working closely with Chayes on games like StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. He left Blizzard at the end of 2019 and to devote some time to family. He also talked with Morhaime and Chayes.

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