How StarCraft 2 fans helped Dreamhaven sign a game

in this environment it's not enough anymore just to have a good game your game has to offer something new to the genre something something special something unique 19,000 games released last year on Steam the number of games that are selling over 100,000 units each year has actually not been [Music] increasing hello and welcome to the game business show with me Christopher dring I'm here in San Francisco to meet dream Haven the developer and publisher set up by former blizzard co-founder Mike main I'm here because they've just announced two new games an internally developed game called wild gate which looks incredible and they' also unveiled they republishing the game mellum meab bellum's already been released they taking over the publishing duties and it looks like a very very blizzard Style game a big strategy title this is on top of two games they revealed last year linked Banner of the spark an independent third party game that they're publishing as well as another internally developed game called sufolk I'm about to catch up with Mike MIM to discuss those titles but talk about

launching these games in the market that we're in currently let's do this hello hi hi M welcome to the game business show how you doing great I'm excited by The Dream Haven the new games that you were showing but when you started which 2020 when it was announced the market was in a wildly different um situation to the one that we find in today have you had to adapt or change or or anything your plans in in the light of it all uh we haven't um because well I mean Co hit right right in the middle so we were about to move into our office in fact I had a a a lease I was about to sign the lease and this was right when there was Rumblings that there may be a lockdown next week they hadn't announced it yet and my wife Amy said you know you you probably should wait to sign that why don't you get why don't we wait a week and see what happens and so so we didn't sign it and obviously the lockdown happened we ended up postponing the Le for like another 9 10 months so

Co obviously was a difficult time to be doing that and building a business but what obviously with the with the momentum in the market with the excitement that's going on in the at the time all the investment all the studios that were starting up and now we seem to be in a situation where things are a little tougher everything's more competitive things seem to be taken a downturn has that affected anything that you've been doing we don't have any games in the market we have LinkedIn Early Access but other than that there's no impact on Revenue because we don't really have any Revenue yet so our uh our focus is has been just working on the games we're working on preparing to get them to release and get them out so there's two aspects of what you're talking about one is the the investment climate has changed dramatically since when we started um luckily we were able to um get the funding that we needed before that changed and then the other part is just that it's very competitive environment

right now it's it is much more difficult to get attention um and break through a lot of the noise and so you know come back and ask me in six months well well when I talk about the the big game that you showed um wild gate it seemed so different it seemed really unique but also it gave me a Vibe of some of the stuff that you might have worked on before in your previous life um what's your ambition with that how do you see it well we're really excited about wild gate um it's a super fun game to play with friends you know you can get a crew of of four people piloting one of these ships around the reach and I think that there are elements of a lot of different types of games that are kind of in there I mean there's some Battle Royale there's some FPS there's some uh extraction yeah so it's a pretty fun fun game and and it also changes a lot from game to game depending on who you're up against well maybe that's the answer to this question we're in a sort of a a

congested and well certainly hostile live service game environment right in terms of trying to get players off one game into the other which it seems to be the big aim is is it's doable but then it kind of keep them is is is really really is even more challenging in many ways taught me talk me for your view on that yeah it it's it is super competitive you you have some some of the top games that have been the top games for many years now we have seen some games break through that and then people go back to playing their their favorite games so I you know we're hoping that each of these games are all very different from each other we hope each of them can find an audience that really falls in love with them and these games can be popular for many years but that's that's our hope and you're leaning into the which every you know I talked to a bunch of people here um uh they're leaning very much into working with the community from the beginning making sure they're on board getting them in make them make the game for them

turn them into evangelist that seems to be the way that you can build these things in it seems to be the way everyone does it now yes I mean you have to find a core audience that loves the game um and and then you have to continue to to monitor the situation and the health of the game to make sure that uh it continues to stay uh fresh and fun you've partnered with two developers third party developers you've got your two internal teams there's lots of new Studios emerging in the market right now and I suspect maybe people from your former live um what do you need to see when someone comes to you with a game what do you need to see from them before you partner with them that's a great question I I think we're looking for a few things we're looking for a team that has the capability to follow through and ultimately ship a great game they have to have the the capability and and the desire to want to do something different I think in this environment it's not enough anymore just to have a good game your game has to offer something new to

the genre something something special something unique and so we look for teams that have a vision for what they think that they can offer that's that's different and special do you expect people to come to you with a prototype already or or how far along do you expect to how long will you go before you want to you know when you know what you're confident in what you're' being shown most of the time when we're talking to teams it's often it's before they have a prototype they they have an idea and they have a core team and they're getting started um occasionally we'll talk to teams that do have a prototype so yeah I guess we we see a whole range nowadays it is a lot more difficult to to raise additional rounds of funding and so um there are a lot of folks that are um are looking around and we we do talk to some of them people perhaps got a bit too much VC funding first off and now can't get that the rest of it and there's lots of

people coming to you with that situation yeah I mean we we uh we know a lot of people that are that are looking and so we we'll talk to them but you're not coming to dream Haven for money we're we're not the source of of of funding if we're making investments in companies it's pretty small investment how did the partnership with is it game River the the uh so the game is already out tell me how that partnership sort of came about yeah so game river is this small really great developer out in China um they put out a turn-based auto battler called mechab Bellum it was an early access for over a year and that's when we discovered it several folks from uh the Starcraft 2 Community actually had recommended it uh to to me and we just thought it was so well well made welld designed um and just a really fun game but they they were locked into a publishing deal we talked to them we met them but there really wasn't a clear way that we could work together and then a couple months

ago they reached out and said hey we are basically getting out of our publishing deal and we want to know if there's something you guys want to do and we just jumped on it and are so excited to pick this game up and have dream Haven become the publisher of of Mecha Bellon it did release in September um a lot of people have asked me so why would you want to publish a game that's already out and I think that um you know I've talked to a lot of people people have either heard of this game and love it or have never heard of the game I think there's just a lot of people that don't even know that mechab Bellum exists and we'd like to just spread the word about it yeah and is is that part is the is it it feels like a game that fits with your history are you embracing that or are you or is it I think it absolutely uh fits with my history um it captures for me all the Strategic depth that I love about real-time strategy without the APM

requirement and so it kind of makes this that strategy accessible to people like me who just I'm just never going to click as fast as some of the younger people out there I think it looked I it was the one I hadn't heard of it before and I saw the trailer and I oh that looks brilliant and the fact that it's already out is is is wonderful but you're launching is a Premium Edition and uh oh yeah we're we're launching a Premium Edition uh the base ski will still be available for $4.99 but um there's also a premium addition that includes a number of uh skins and emotes and emoticons have you now that you you considering your history and some of the history of your team have youve been getting in there and meddling and having some views and suggestions and in a good way um you know I'm not I I think they've done a great job in designing the game I think that there's uh you know we we talk to the developer fre frequently um they're doing a great job we just want to be supportive and um um you know I'm

spending a lot of time playing good and the other obviously the game that you announced you've already announced but I I really quite like is some folk those sort of games where you use a tablet I mentioned this um uh or a phone they've not quite caught on the way I'm surprised they haven't before in a significant way why do you think this is different why do you think this might be this might resonate I'm not sure I mean there are certainly um uh popular games that use dual screen the jackbox games do it very well yes yes of course but Center folk kind of takes it to another level and so the the second screen isn't just your controller it's really your interface to the game itself yeah and in this case tactical RPGs are uh notorious for big manuals and a lot of rules that you have to know and computer games are just very good at making a lot of that transparent to the user um and so you know this is an opportunity really expose this genre to a lot of people that yeah Cur currently enjoying it well one of the

questions I'm going to ask is what you know as a veteran of this industry what do you think needs to happen to get the business back to a growth situation where things are growing again and we can start getting a little bit more excited I think I guess it feels some positive momentum at the minute or at least a little bit um and I guess but things like this it's the trying different things and trying to take these genres into slightly borderer markets is is is that is that part of that well I mean we know that there are more people playing games today than than ever before we've got very viable gaming platforms I think this is just a an opportunity to leverage the current state of Technology you know the fact that everybody has a phone powerful computer in their pocket everybody has uh the ability to play games on their on their TV and so just to leverage all this computing power to reduce the barriers and have people have uh tactical RPG experience how big are your internal

Studios now uh they're different sizes so we have the two Studios Secret Door is about 30 moonshot is about 50 m and then we have a central team so dream Haven all together is about 120 the way lot of Studios have being set up today it's it's small teams lot of Outsourcing and using other production methods is that something that your teams are doing at the moment or is it just very much that they're trying to keep think Co focused with the uh we like the idea of having small focused teams um we are using outsourced Partners in a lot of different areas to help sort of augment our capabilities yeah was that always the plan or is it something that you've adapted to as you as the as because the cost of games have got you know even in the last ever since you started up really they they keep going up we had all the wage Rises during the pandemic and then the cost of living crisis that's got to be something that's front of mind yeah th this has always been the plan um to and we talk a lot about crawl walk run you know just

start off building a foundation building our internal capabilities um and then grow the complexity of what we're trying to do over time has anything surprised you in this I mean it's been really surprising five years but has anything surprised you that might be different to what we've heard the number of games that are coming to Market each year you know we just saw the the latest report from Steam 19,000 games released last year on Steam um the number of games that are selling over 100,000 units each year has actually not been increasing each year and so the the gaming has always been a very competitive environment we know this um it's always been the case that the top games account for the vast majority of the revenues yeah but the level to which that has continued to be the case is a bit surprising what you do about

that I mean it just puts even more um emphasis I think of needing to have games that that ST stand out in some way that um you know if you're going after a particular genre then you have to be one of if not the game to play in that genre in order to be successful I see most of the games are like very multiplatform you there there not we're going PC first moving into con like there's a there's a very Focus I think most of them G come switch as well and obviously so and is that was that important uh we want to make sure our games are where people are that want to play them and so that means getting our games um onto all the appropriate Platforms in all the uh as many languages as we can so that our games are available to the people wherever they are and on whatever platforms they want to play have you learned anything

from linked because it launched Early Access last year I mean how have you found that well that's really our first game that we've launched on Steam and if you think about it you know my whole career at blizzard um we we started putting our games on battl net a very long time ago and and so my experience was really focusing on our own platform that we owned and controlled and so linked is really the first time that we're going and and launching on Steam so we're learning a ton about oh wow About Steam and how that works and I world we are learning a ton yeah it's a tough time to learn that learn steam when it's it's so competitive and there's so many no time better than the present yeah have you had toing had to bring people in how how have you that to yeah we we have we we've brought in people um uh I mean every everyone every everyone um that were working with um has been brought in

from somewhere you know there are a lot of folks who we worked with at blizzard but there are also a lot of people we've brought in um who've worked at other companies and um several people who have had a lot more experience working with the the first parties and steam I was talking to the um theara's Team about the civilization they decided to launch that the latest game on switch at the same time and asked them why why they do that why why was important and he went the person I spoke to told me that um uh civilization 6 came out um when they put it on the switch they found lots of people bought it but they were the same people that bought the PC version Oh interesting because they basically people wanted to play on the go they wanted to take their experiences with them even though it wasn't really built for that that's what they they found so they were very much from the very beginning um wanted to take that wanted to K let their players can keep playing in their own way so that's why they to switch but I think steam deck as well is a is a is an interesting it's quite a complicated Market really in terms of trying to make make sure you do reach those consumers but then also the ones

you when you reach them making sure that they can keep playing in all the ways that they want to keep playing I guess it's it's remarkable how fast things have moved in the last W maybe it feels short time but it's probably going about 5 years there wasn't really a question there that was me just a um chatting yeah yeah um yeah I think steam uh steam deck is is very cool you know I've been spending a lot of time just using steam link to get um stream uh games to different devices um which works great with sufolk because sufolk really wants to be played on a big screen in your living room you know and there's a lot of different ways to get it there um you know consoles steam link to your Apple TV or whatnot um but uh yeah we're just making sure that all of these things are good seamless experiences yeah I'll ask one more question I've got a sense now of the dream Haven Vision we've seen some of the games we' got we can see the

sort of titles they are see the level of quality they are so I've got a sense of it but what is the ambition what's your aim I think if you boil it down we're trying to create a brand that means something to players so you know if you look at the four games that we're talking about um they're very different you know then they're all in different genres they all play very different differently um but they do have something in common which is they all very fun to share with your friends and um and they're all really really good games I'm very proud of each each and every one of them and so my hope is that we have a game for everyone you know all of these games may not be for everyone but hopefully um there's something in here for for everyone and if people find their game they have a great time with it and it starts to build trust in the brand that dream Haven will hopefully stand for

highquality uh gaming and you know hopefully we can we can grow a loyal audience of players that's interested in um in checking out things maybe in genres they don't normally play it's very nice how many see how many games are you able to publish you because a lot of them are coming this year aren't they it's quite it's quite a it's all of a sudden so yeah we've got these these four and there's some stuff that we're working on that we're not ready to talk about yet okay so there's more than four you can do yeah not this year not this year though a grand fft auto takes up half the year so yeah well thank you so much for your time Micha I really appreciate you um uh taking time out and and congratulations on the review and I hope best of luck for the teams and and the launches thank you for having me thank you that was Mike there talking about the state of the games industry and launching these new projects in this market uh stay tuned to the game business show we've got a load of new stuff coming up over the next couple of weeks and days in fact our next show is all about the

state of games investment you don't want to miss that that is out on Thursday until then thank you for listening and all watching