Dreamhaven (Mike Morhaime et al) & Frost Giant Studios (Tim Campbell et al) new gaming companies

[deepstrasz]

Recently today it has been announced that Mike Morhaime (cofounder and ex-CEO of Blizzard Entertainment) and his wife Amy Morhaime (ex-ledearship roles on Blizzard Global Esports teams) began a new video games trademark named Dreamhaven. The company has two studios: Moonshot Games and Secret Door.
The first is lead by Jason Chayes (former art lead and development director at Electronic Arts and worked on Hearthstone), Dustin Browder (worked in the field of game direction and design on Command & Conquer, StarCraft II and Heroes of the Storm) and Ben Thompson (years of experience in visual arts direction). The second is lead by Chris Sigaty (oversaw the development of Warcraft III, StarCraft II, Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone), Alan Dabiri (helped develop Warcraft III, StarCraft II and Heroes of the Storm) and Eric Dodds (was a game director for Hearthstone and designer for World of Warcraft).


The company's values and goals are, quoting:

• Reimagine the studio model by empowering studios to establish independent identities, voices and cultures.
• Create vibrant worlds that reflect our values
• Take the chances that most big publishers won't and many smaller studios aren't always able to
• Provide a safe place where developers, creators, and players can connect in meaningful ways
• Create games that we would be proud to share with our children and the world

The teams are made of around 7-9 people and are looking for more.

Moonshot Games is in need of:

• 3D Generalist at Moonshot Games - Join us!
• Concept Artist at Moonshot Games - Join us!
• Gameplay Engineer at Moonshot Games - Join us!
• Lead Platform Engineer at Moonshot Games - Join us!

Secret Door requires:

• 3D Generalist at Secret Door - Join us!
• Gameplay Engineer at Secret Door - Join us!
• Server Engineer at Secret Door - Join us!

Job openings: Careers - Dreamhaven

In the news:

• https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?next_url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2020/09/23/mike-morhaime-blizzard-dreamhaven/
• Blizzard cofounder Mike Morhaime launches new gaming endeavor Dreamhaven
• Mike Morhaime's new games company dreams of being an industry beacon
• Why Blizzard's Co-Founder Swapped Endless Vacation to Set Up a New Games Company - IGN

courtesy of @stein123

 

[deepstrasz]

Frost Giant Studios Announces Partnership with Dreamhaven - Licensing Unreal Engine 5 for New RTS Title

Alongside their partnership with Lightforge Games, One More Game, and Raid Base, Mike Morhaime's Dreamhaven will also be assisting Frost Giant Studios, providing development consolation to the new real-time strategy studio of former Blizzard devs.

www.wowhead.com

Frost Giant Studios teams up with Dreamhaven and inks licensing deal for Unreal Engine 5

Frost Giant Studios has teamed up on an advisory basis with Mike Morhaime's Dreamhaven, and it is licensing Unreal Engine 5 from Epic.

venturebeat.com

courtesy of @MasterBlaster and @stein123

 

[hivemessenger]

Are they making any RTS? Have they announced whixh game they are worknig on?

 

[deepstrasz]

Are they making any RTS? Have they announced whixh game they are worknig on?

Frost Giant Studios

Frost Giant Studios is a game development studio located in Orange County, California, on a mission to bring real-time strategy (RTS) games to a broader audience.

www.frostgiant.com

Spoiler

Some of the progress they've made:

Spoiler

They're gonna use Unreal Engine 5:

Spoiler

Ironic how Frost Giant and the look of the logo resembles Blizzard . The animation literally starts with a blizzard . Nice jesting!

Riot Games, maker of League of Legends invests in Frost Giant Studios.
Some of them work with virtual reality tech.

Spoiler

Apparently, they will have editors for their game(s):

Spoiler

As @Venombite mentioned in another thread, the team mostly comprises of former StarCraft II members. One of them had something to do with Diablo IV and another with Warcraft III: Reforged . I just hope Micky Neilson will write his own universe/story with characters and stuff.

Spoiler

They have a reddit page where they take, consider and answer to feedback: overview for FrostGiant_Studios

---

Dreamhaven offers internships this year!

Dreamhaven’s 2023 Summer Internship Program - Now Closed - Dreamhaven

Thank you for your interest!

www.dreamhaven.com

 

[Retera]

I find myself feeling really skeptical of whether I will care about an RTS that someone else makes in the Unreal Engine. For me personally, because of how much I was not well informed about how RTS games are made and where these technologies come from, getting into Warcraft III World Editor as a kid was fun because it was a new technology. It enabled me to customize my experience in ways that other similar RTS technologies did not.

Because Unreal Engine already exists, I find it very unlikely that the game this Frost Giant studio produces will have the same level of customization as Warcraft III -- the efficient solution for their team will be to use the same concepts and designs that are already present in the Unreal Engine at the base level. If this game does have that same level of efficient "good feeling" customization as Warcraft III, it seems very likely I will find it to be personally inefficient to use, similar to how I did not get super deep into Starcraft 2 modding even though on almost all accounts Starcraft 2 modding is more free and capable of "creating anything."

In other words, it is plausible to me that Frost Giant might make a new cult classic game that is a tremendous hit success and a new eSport, but when I want to get that Warcraft III modding feeling it seems incredibly likely to me that I will end up going back to Warcraft III and being stuck on it. Warcraft III is this giant hacked together system that does many different things reasonably well. And I am not even sure that I am still able to enjoy that as I once did, but from time to time I try.

I find that if I were a billionaire and I could make any future RTS product that I wanted, I think that what I would probably do for my own personal entertainment -- and maybe other people would not like this and would not play it -- but for my personal entertainment I would want to purchase the intellectual property of the Warcraft III game code, then publish a version of the game where the only graphics setting available is the old 2002 graphics, but I would get artists to make 10-20 new tilesets in that same style and level of detail, 2000-3000 new items to put in the Item Editor (mostly re-using WoW icons for their item icons), 4-8 new factions in the Unit Editor, and 60-80 new heroes who each had their own sets of 4 new unique abilities in the Ability Editor.
When this was done, it would be a 25-30 GB installation similar to Reforged, but because it would be using the old SD graphics all that space would be used for thousands of new character models. The original game had 3000 character models and was roughly 2 GB even when inflated due to how CASC stores it or whatever (the old versions were closer to 1 GB). So I think it's safe to assume that with another 28 GB, would could have another 14*3000=42000 new model files.

So, long story short, it seems like what would personally be inspiring to me is probably something that is only personally inspiring to me, and maybe not something anybody else wants. As a result, I do not foresee these companies creating the kind of stuff that I imagine I want. But they will make something, and they will probably feel good about it, so I guess that is good for them.

 

[deepstrasz]

@Retera I guess Unreal will provide people the means to make mods such as how they made for Half-Life 2 using the Source engine. I mean, it might even get more advanced than the Galaxy Editor but that doesn't mean they can't make a World Editor. We shall see. It's on them if they want to make a friendly place for everyone because RTS e-Sports aren't that popular anymore because the genre isn't as easy as its downgraded and hybrid forms as AoS/MOBA.

What Warcraft III needs is just freedom of adding stuff on top. There shouldn't be a finite number of tilesets you could use in one map. There shouldn't be a limit to the map size (well, depends), or units that can move without staggering at one time; unit pathing should be improved if wanted etc.
I think Warcraft III for modders should be a source of means to create things, so models and other resources could just be added from various places, no need to be there from the start. What the engine needs is as mentioned above, freedom of change/furthering.

 

[deepstrasz]

Old news but they are asking for RTS lovers for feedback on what such a new game would need to be great.

Spoiler

Main points in the video:

• They are not focusing as much on graphics than on gameplay mechanics.
• Sometimes they don't show or announce everything they are doing but they are working hard behind the scenes, they say.
• The design of the units will probably be similar to games like StarCraft and Warcraft (RTS) in terms of size and proportions.
• The gameplay also will be mainly inspired from Blizzard RTS games.
• They are using the Unreal 5 engine.

There's also an official member feedback and plans thread on Hiveworkshop: Frost Giant RTS Editor Plans & Feedback

---

In other news, Dreamhaven is offering diversity based scholarships:

Hello Students! We’re Partnering with Gay Gaming Professionals & the ESA Foundation to Offer Two College Scholarships for the 2022 -2023 School Year - Dreamhaven

Read on to Hear from this Year’s Scholarship Winner and Learn more About the Program!

www.dreamhaven.com

There are also job openings:

Careers - Dreamhaven

Dreamhaven is a new video game developer and publisher based in Irvine, California.

www.dreamhaven.com

 

[Evilhog]

So, the Frost Giant RTS.

Stormgate on Steam

Stormgate is a free-to-play real-time strategy game set amidst a war between humanity and an onslaught of alien invaders. Take on the campaign alone or cooperatively, play casual and competitive PvP and co-op modes online, or get creative in the editor. Welcome to the future of RTS!

store.steampowered.com

Looks cartoony and generic, and they're making it on Unreal Engine 5 of all things.
It's also going to be f2p, but they promise that you will never have to "pay to win".

 

[Kasrkin]

Well that looked fucking terrible, the models are just in your face blizzard property references.

 

[deepstrasz]

Well that looked fucking terrible, the models are just in your face blizzard property references.

Ha-ha, Kerrigan/Nova and her observer probe. And then Diablo protoss-zerg hybrid vs Goliath.
It's gonna be a Warcraft-StarCraft mix, kind of like Heroes of the Storm.

 

[Kasrkin]

Ha-ha, Kerrigan/Nova and her observer probe. And then Diablo protoss-zerg hybrid vs Goliath.
It's gonna be a Warcraft-StarCraft mix, kind of like Heroes of the Storm.

Not so much the goliath but more of that overwatch mech.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Before the announcement, I've thought to myself "please, don't be another generic cartoony game that looks like it was made for phones" - sadly, that's exactly how it looks to me. But okay, it's an indie game, so I guess it was my bad to expect something more, though to my defence - the devs said that they're aiming for a next-generation, high quality RTS and they're using UE5, so it wasn't hard to get one's hopes up.

Anyway, underwhelming graphics and boring trailer aside, it's really hard to judge the game right now. We haven't seen any gameplay or the editor, but the feature list looks promising - definetely not "the future of RTS" (as FG advertises their game) good, but good enough for a decent modern RTS, so while my hype levels are fairly low, I'll definetely keep an eye out to see how the game progresses.

P.S. The only thing that actually scared me was the "F2P" part. I've watched an interview with the devs and it's supposed to be cosmetics and campaign DLCs, no annoying pay-to-not-feel-fucked-by-the-game bullshit that games like Diablo Immortal are full of. Fingers crossed that's the case.

 

[Evilhog]

campaign DLCs

I'm curious whether these will work for Frost Giant. Blizzard was unsuccessful with Nova Covert Ops mission packs and canned the whole idea.

 

[stein123]

 

[Villagerino]

So, the Frost Giant RTS.

Stormgate on Steam

Stormgate is a free-to-play real-time strategy game set amidst a war between humanity and an onslaught of alien invaders. Take on the campaign alone or cooperatively, play casual and competitive PvP and co-op modes online, or get creative in the editor. Welcome to the future of RTS!

store.steampowered.com

Looks cartoony and generic, and they're making it on Unreal Engine 5 of all things.
It's also going to be f2p, but they promise that you will never have to "pay to win".

Animations are a bit "wooden". Trailer: women beat all.

 

[Uncle]

I'm pretty excited for it. A modern RTS with a map editor and custom game lobbies, sign me up.

Regarding the f2p model, DotA 2 and Path of Exile are great examples of how to do f2p. When done properly you can't really beat it...

 

[Evilhog]

Animations are a bit "wooden".

Turns out, the trailer was made in-engine. Maybe the game will have a proper CGI intro as well?
Rob Pardo's studio (Bonfire) has former Blizzard Cinematics director Nick Carpenter on board. Maybe they should join forces.

The developer update video made me even more skeptical about the chosen art direction and visual style of the game. Though it's being made on UE5, it looks like a mobile game.

 

[Winimasker]

at 1:33 of the video, this is huge because we can look at the highest solid terrain without vision being blocked like in WC3R, much like foreground visual effects there. What makes the Stormgate also very huge, I mean very huge in terms of game variety impacts and perception of the receivers towards such specific game, is that if we look at DotA 2, Red Solstice 2: Survivors, Legion TD 2, Dwarven Monster Slayers, (Steam mode) Element TD 2, etc., it is not received as a sequel as an indie game, to the custom map of WC3R's, SC's, SC2's or DotA 2's, but rather it is from after the working history on WC and SC and then the indie development to such non-custom-map-driven or after-Blizzard-games-driven game, it is so anew roaring the next gen. of RTS, not after custom map but after WC and SC, a new perception model.

Perhaps I can give the suggestion although it is site discussion-related:
What about Custom Games section of Hive to mark the standalone indie games after no matter the format of perception model, i.e. either being [ edited: custom-map-driven; was copy-pasting ] or after-Blizzard-games-driven, or anything. @Ralle

It is super huge, so huge, greater that if you can notice such new-era changes of game development industry, it's time for next gen. RTS!