Frost Giant Studios vs Dreamhaven

Frost Giant Studios vs Dreamhaven

If you had to bet on which one of them will succeed more, which would it be?

Me personally, I'm a Frost Giant fan for one simple reason: they have Kevin "Monk" Dong. I'm a Co-op fan, and that guy made everything that's great in Co-op. (almost everything.. prestige system was implemented after his time)
Tbh, first when I read "Former Production Director of StarCraft II and C&C: Generals 2." and "Lead Campaign Designer of Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne." - I thought that team is OP. But then I realized, it's "Production Director" and "Campaign Designer of Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne". Idk what a production director is, but it's not game design probably, so whatever. And TFT campaign is ass compared to RoC tbh.
But nevertheless, the fact that Kevin is hired as a "LEAD CO-OP DESIGNER" means they'll have top notch Co-op no matter what!

Dreamhaven has some points too though. For one, I think it's more popular and I assume that there has to be a reason for it.
Hopefully, it's something other than the fact that Mike Morhaim is on the team. (also, with Mike on the team - you know that if it ever succeeds then it will never experience the same downfall as Blizzard did)


The problem with Dreamhaven is that idk anything about them even after visiting their website. Other than links to some articles about Mike making it. Like what is moonshot and secret door? Compare it to Frost Giants, where I'm immediately amazed about their roster or feel optimistic about their core values? Going through Dreamhaven's "About" page, I'll probably not follow their future. Like it's a whole lot of nothing and a whole lot of gibberish at best. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Btw, there was a time when Monk had all of Swann's speedrun records - the arguably hardest commander. :laugh:
I remember watching his replays to study.. good times.

I don't know, but god I hope frost giant succeeds. Even if I've gotta wait 5 years or more, I really wanna see the RTS genre get some new life on the level of StarCraft or Age of Empires.

I would bet hard on Dreamhaven. Mike Morhaime was one of the Blizzard co-founders and helped build the place making the iconic games we loved like Starcraft and Diablo. He was the big factor holding back Activisions greed until he couldn't any more and left. I have a personal love for any video game business man that pushes against 'post sale revenue' or 'microtransactions' in the way big industry is trying.

One major point in their favor is financing. They are super solid and have no 'need' to push some half cooked game out to make money. Keeping suits out of art is a huge driving factor to make a product people fall in love with imo..

Another is that Activision has flatly said they will focus on post sale revenue and mobile games. They want to be the next EA pumping out titles like Madden making billions without any actual development. This means terrible things for the future of things like Starcraft and Diablo (even if you dismiss the fact Blizzard just lost all their long term talent.) Considering they have all but abandoned Starcraft there will be a gap there and in an interview it was said Dreamhavens 'Moonshot Studios' first big project is gona be an RTS. I bet that will become Koreas new national sport and I bet they will do it right given its what will launch their company. (Secret Door they said will focus more on indy games and passion projects.)

But at the same time I just dont know all that much about Frost Giant Studios. I like the names I dont know if they take a hard line against greedy industry practices..

-edit
Oh wow.. I think I got the studios completely backwards or something. Its been so long sense had looked into this. Forget everything I just said >.<

Dreamhaven is being lead under the old blizzard ethos and clearly has a lot of the old time blizzard heavy hitters there, though frost giant more or less is the whole SC2 team minus Browder that made that game good including lead engineer and lead coop designer.
I have faith that if you're into RTS that frost giant is your best bet at getting something decent. Dreamhaven's two studios seem to be wildly different in focus (isnt one doing a tabletop?)
But I think all 3 studios have a much different philosophy to the shareholder ActiBlizz style. I'm interested either way

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Elixir

Dreamhaven is being lead under the old blizzard ethos and clearly has a lot of the old time blizzard heavy hitters there, though frost giant more or less is the whole SC2 team minus Browder that made that game good including lead engineer and lead coop designer.

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I don't know people, was never interesting to me, so I only recognize 2 people on Dreamhaven:
Mike Morhaim and the "don't you guys have phones?" guy.
If they ever succeed then they're less likely to downfall thanks to Mike. But that other guy? I hold no faith in someone who hit rock bottom in terms of being disconnected from their own community. Though he might be traumatized by the backflash and got back to earth from it. :laugh:


Btw, looking at the faces on both sites - Dreamhaven has more young people than old timers. That surprised me.
What do you guys think is better? Old and experienced or young? In programming, in game design, in leading the business?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Elixir

Dreamhaven's two studios seem to be wildly different in focus (isnt one doing a tabletop?)

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Sounds like one of their studios is focused on money whilst the other is focused on making real games. Makes kinda sense imho. If you want money, go mobile. If you want real games, you need money.

Frost Giant seems to have the good defectors from Activizzard, which is a very good thing. What they claim to be their goal is also highly interesting. If something comes out of it someday, I'm quite likely to give it a shot. As for Dreamhaven, well, I had to doublecheck what they had said on their page because I realized I didn't remember anything. When I doublechecked, I realized it was because they weren't saying anything...

Frost Giant 2-0

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Helz

I would bet hard on Dreamhaven. Mike Morhaime was one of the Blizzard co-founders and helped build the place making the iconic games we loved like Starcraft and Diablo. He was the big factor holding back Activisions greed until he couldn't any more and left. I have a personal love for any video game business man that pushes against 'post sale revenue' or 'microtransactions' in the way big industry is trying.

One major point in their favor is financing. They are super solid and have no 'need' to push some half cooked game out to make money. Keeping suits out of art is a huge driving factor to make a product people fall in love with imo..

Another is that Activision has flatly said they will focus on post sale revenue and mobile games. They want to be the next EA pumping out titles like Madden making billions without any actual development. This means terrible things for the future of things like Starcraft and Diablo (even if you dismiss the fact Blizzard just lost all their long term talent.) Considering they have all but abandoned Starcraft there will be a gap there and in an interview it was said Dreamhavens 'Moonshot Studios' first big project is gona be an RTS. I bet that will become Koreas new national sport and I bet they will do it right given its what will launch their company. (Secret Door they said will focus more on indy games and passion projects.)

But at the same time I just dont know all that much about Frost Giant Studios. I like the names I dont know if they take a hard line against greedy industry practices..

-edit
Oh wow.. I think I got the studios completely backwards or something. Its been so long sense had looked into this. Forget everything I just said >.<

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So to unfuck myself and get my facts straight..

I found some of the stuff I was reading 8 or 10 months ago, One part of interest is that DreamHaven's name is kinda a punch in the dick to Activision. This is some ramblings by Mike Morhaime:

“We’re almost trying to create a haven for creators who want an environment that is development-friendly, values product, and player experience over short-term financial pressures; We believe in the power of gaming to bring people together and as an escape of the unpleasant things that reality can bring. In that sense, it’s a haven as well."
“We like the imagery of a lighthouse as a beacon, and that inspires us because we hope that Dreamhaven can be a beacon of hope to others in the industry who share our values and philosophies, there is a better way of approaching business and game creation that can work and be sustainable and be a lot of fun and yield positive results."

In context this came after Activision went full greed causing a big chunk of blizzard to split off. Pretty much everything they are saying is a big 'fuck you' to the greed in the gaming industry.

I was also totally confusing the first project of the companies. Frost Giant is indeed the one working on the RTS. Dream Haven's first big one under moonshot is rumored to be some kinda RPG or maybe MMORPG. But I was correct about Dream Haven starting privately funded. It appeals to me quite a bit that the entire company message is to push against sole loyalty to shareholders.

I still have to look into Frost Giant more but @OzyWho when you mentioned Kevin Dong I knew I knew that name. He is the Team Liquid guy that did some super badass stuff to support the SC2 modding community. Lots of love for him.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Helz

I still have to look into Frost Giant more but @OzyWho when you mentioned Kevin Dong I knew I knew that name. He is the Team Liquid guy that did some super badass stuff to support the SC2 modding community. Lots of love for him.

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I ended up being untruthful about him ftr.
He joined the design team late. Before that, he did this guide series , which is outdated now but was the best thing back then.
The time when he was the co-op designer was like the golden age of co-op. Lots of positive changes like you wouldn't believe. And he basically got the job by being the most enthusiastic and contributive member of the community. (there's other games with people with similar stories, but it's impressive nonetheless imho)

I know that Omar Gonzalez (one of the most well known WoW Classic Developer) left and joined Dreamhaven which made me think that Dreamhaven is working on their next RPG/MMORPG while Frost Giant seems to be working on a new RTS.