Mike: [00:00:00] Well, yeah, but that's, that's also part of the iterative process, right? So you have to be willing to change the things that aren't working and go back. And sometimes that means we, we canceled. We went back and looked, and I think Blizzard canceled like half of the projects that we started. We never, of course, set out as like, oh, we think it's a great idea to cancel half of the things that we do.
Of course not. You know, it's always painful every time. You have to say no, it's never easy.
Alex: That was Mike Heim, the Mike Heim, founder of co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment Current CEO, and founder of Dream Haven. Uh, what a treat to have him on the program, talking about some of the, uh, perspective and ethos and, and rigor, uh, that. Resulted in blizzards. Just incredible string of successes. Game over game, franchise over franchise.
Yeah. [00:01:00] Just so impressive. They canceled half, like, probably canceled half the games they worked on. You know, that We didn't even know about it.
Aaron: Yeah. I bet you half of those games, the, the half they canceled, I bet you all of them are like, good.
Alex: You know what I mean? Yeah, no, yeah, they're solid. They're probably all like, just really solid.
Just, but not, um, good, good enough. You know, SU Supercell does something similar, you know, they, they work on a lot of games and I, I think it's maybe more publicly known in their case because they, they actually will take them to like a soft launch and, and then maybe just shelf it. You know, he, you know, he talked, Mike talked about this in a few different places in the conversation.
We're not gonna spoil that conversation. I know you're gonna wanna listen to it anyways, but to talk about how, uh, to keep that bar high from the beginning, uh, through kind of growing as an independent and, you know, blizzard had was on this such a unique ride of like, they got acquired relatively early by Davidson, and they were a part of Sierra, then it was like the CUC Vivendi eventually Activision.
So [00:02:00] lots of different contexts that they were working in eventually. Now Microsoft, you know, eventually these large. Publicly traded companies where there's a lot of outside pressure and maintaining that, that focus on quality. I think Mike was pivotal in making that happen, you know? Yeah. He talked about like the founders, I don't know if it was founder's authority, but just the, the, you know, like if, if you are the, the one who started the thing in anything, you know, you have some amount of credibility and you have a voice, you know, and he, he used it really effectively.
Aaron: Yeah. And they gave him permission too. Which you'll find out when you listen.
Alex: Yeah. Yeah. A
Aaron: lot of people don't have that Right. After you get acquired, it's like, now you're doing what we say. I,
Alex: I'll, I'll, I'll tell you, like, I've had this conversation with folks in, in my studios, um, from time to time. And when I was younger, I really didn't understand it, which was I'd be helping somebody who was having a challenge maybe with their, with, uh, somebody they worked with or their team or whatever.
Aaron: Hold on. In a leadership, in a leadership position. Yes. In
Alex: a, in a leadership position. Um, [00:03:00] and I would say something that just sounded to me, sounded simple. It's like, well, if you want it this particular way, then, then, uh, then say that, you know, and, and it sort of lead the way there. And, and I, I, I've heard the following a few times.
It's like, well, you know, it's, that's easy for you to say because you are the founder of the studio. And I'm, you know, I'm not, so it's like, I, it's, it's, it's an authority that doesn't always get. Reflected back to, you know, this person or whatever, you know, and it
Aaron: Oh,
Alex: yeah. Yeah. And I, I think in some ways, yeah, I think in some ways that, that is on like me or the structure of the com, you know, we always try to be really flat, you know, without like, okay, you, you have to report to them and do what they say.
But when you do that, it's, you kind of have to lead by consensus or influence and,
Aaron: well, I'm gonna say that like, I think that you, if you're in a room with someone and you want, and you know this already, you could say, [00:04:00] Hey, person A, let's do this thing and let's, you know, person B will be managing that. And that's all you need to say that one time, you know, I've seen you do that before.
Alex: Yeah.
Aaron: Like, I've done it, I do it with my kids. Hey, your big sisters in charge. You're gonna listen to her and I'll see you later. I just, and it
Alex: just takes that. You're absolutely right, but when I was younger, I had this very kind of e egalitarian or merit meritocratic, uh, you know, point of view of like, we don't need bosses, we just need good ideas, and it'll work itself out.
I think you, do you need bosses? Yeah. No, you do. Yeah, you do. Well, you, you just need clarity. It's like, okay, well somebody's, the worst thing you could do is not decide a thing. Right. So who's who, you know? And if not everybody agrees. Somebody does have to make a decision, you know? So Yeah. When people know that that's a good thing.
Aaron: Yeah. Even when the decision's wrong, like I, that's a very hard, or when it looks wrong, like a lot of new people usually suffer from this, I think. Yeah. They don't want to make a wrong decision, so they just don't make a [00:05:00] decision. Or they think they know the best way to get to the flag that was thrown. And you have people that have years of experience saying, let's do this thing, and then it looks completely crazy.
You know, and it's like, what? No, like I know how to do, like we should do it this way. This is how I did it in game Jams and it worked. And it's like,
Alex: yeah, but that's different. You know what I mean? Or something
Aaron: like, you know what I mean? Or like, this is how we did it in college and or on my own. And, and, um, I don't know.
I think, I think the, the, the reason he's very successful too was because he, the amount of stuff like you can, you, you know, when something is like gonna work or not, or when, whenever you throw the flag and then like, you start going towards it, you know, about 25% of the way there. Like, and especially with experience, you know, like, yeah, we're gonna go over a cliff.
We should probably throw its own other way.
Alex: Retreat. Retreat,
Aaron: yeah. Yeah. And it's like, but having, having that knowledge, right? Like, you get that from years of [00:06:00] not, like, you probably didn't get it the first time and then you learned and then the second, and that's where those like, I think that's why you like analytics now, right?
Like I, I've joked with you before, like, Hey, let's, let's make a game. And, you know, with no analytics, like, it's just, it's like a game from the eighties. You'd like that, that would be the dumbest thing to do, right? Information.
Alex: Information is power. I like analytics. I don't love analytics. I don't, I don't wanna live just, they're very helpful.
I just, I don't wanna live just by data. You know? If I lived just by data, my, my, uh, the menu, uh, our dinner menu would be. Exploring.
Aaron: Yeah. Yeah. I thought analytics were stupid when I first heard that was my newness. And then I saw just how fricking helpful they were. Yeah. They improved like it like, Hey, when are people dropping out of our game?
It's like right here. Oh yeah. Why? Well, it's like, I don't know why, but they're dropping out right here. And then you, you turn on, you put on your little detective outfit and then it's like, yeah.
Alex: Oh, you look at a heat map.
Aaron: Heat. Heat maps
Alex: are, are analytics. Uh, listener, if you're not [00:07:00] familiar with a heat map, you can actually look at a map at your level and see the places where players are getting stuck or dying.
Aaron: Yeah.
Alex: Helps
Aaron: you or spending too much time. Like why are they Yeah. Speaking, spending
Alex: too much time, uh, I think are heat map intro is fine. Yes. Time, time to share our conversation with Mike. Uh, I hope you enjoy it. We had just had such a great, uh, a great time hanging out with
Aaron: and I enjoyed the console. You talk about your first console.
You on the lookout for that part of Right on. Uh,
Alex: so, uh, enjoy the conversation and we shall see you on the other side. Welcome to the Fourth Curtain Friends. Today's guest is a true titan of the game industry, the legendary Mike Moham. As co-founder and longtime president and CEO of Blizzard Entertainment, Mike helped bring to life some of the most iconic f.
This doesn't get all to hear, I hope. Mike, iconic franchises in gaming, history, Warcraft, Diablo, StarCraft, world of Warcraft, r Stone, Overwatch, just an incredible, [00:08:00] incredible run. He's now building New Worlds as the founder and CEO of Dream Haven. Mike is a Hall of Fame inductee at the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences.
That's a mouthful. Yeah. And even accepted an Emmy Award on behalf of Blizzard for World of Warcraft. Mike, it's an absolute honor to have you here with us. Welcome to the fourth Curtain. How are you?
Mike: I'm great, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Wait, what's the Emmy about? I didn't know about the Emmy.
What's the Emmy? It was like technical achievement in video games, something like that. Oh, that's cool.
Alex: Yeah,
Mike: the Emmys and actually, um, the, uh, south Park episode where they featured World of War Crap.
Alex: Yeah. That
Mike: wasn't our Emmy, but the episode, that episode received an Emmy, so that episode is so, did, did you know that was played for that too?
Was
Alex: great. Did you know that was happening?
Mike: We did, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. We had a team down there working with them on, uh, helping them capture footage from the game.
Alex: [00:09:00] Oh, that's amazing. I was kind of thinking like, where, where to start this conversation. Um, because it, there's so much, but I thought maybe I wanted to ask, start at Dream Haven because I just watched you guys did like a press announcement, a, a reveal.
I kinda, I follow, I I follow the industry. I follow the industry very much. Um, and I was very impressed with how much there. There was there, you know, often, you know, a company sort of reveals what they've been working on and there's, it's a lot of talk and there was a lot of game, uh, especially Wild Gate looks so, so fun.
It looks so good. Um, I just, what have you guys been up to? Oh, like, really? I mean, I know, like we saw the stuff so we know kind of what you've been up to, but like, what's it, what's it been like starting a, a developer publisher in a kind of a bigger sort of thing this day and age?
Mike: Yeah, so, um, you know, we've been at it for over five years now, [00:10:00] and when we started, we really started with really just the founding team.
We didn't know what games we were gonna make. We didn't even know what we were gonna call. The, the company, we kind of had a general idea of what we wanted the structure of the company to be. We knew that we wanted to have these, these internal studios that felt like they had agency over what they were building, because that was really a big motivator for us for all the years at Blizzard to feel like we were in control and able to change direction when things weren't working, um, without a lot of red tape.
And so we kind of wanted to bring forward a lot of the values and philosophies that we had that we thought helped us be so successful at Blizzard and build a team. You know, there was a lot of, at the time, there was a lot of great talent leaving these Triple A. Publishers and one of the ideas was, um, to try to set up [00:11:00] a structure that allowed us to capture some of that talent that was dispersing and scattering around.
And so I think, you know, very quickly we were able to build some very strong teams and start working on some new games. We figured out what we wanted the company to be called, and we also wanted some sort of system to help us interact with other third party studios that we didn't fully own. And that became our partner studio program.
And we now have a dozen studios in that partner studio program where we're just basically, we have a relationship with these studios. We provide them guidance and advice. Um, in most cases we have a small equity stake in the studios. And, um, and in a few of those cases, it's grown into a, a deeper partnership where Dream Haven will end up being the publisher of those games.
Alex: Hmm. So the partnership is not necessarily a publishing deal?
Mike: No, it's not a publishing deal.
Alex: Ah, okay. It's, it's a, Hey, we can help guide some of the journey [00:12:00] towards a good outcome.
Mike: Yeah. That's the, that's the hope, you know, and we, we are fortunate to have a very experienced team. So we've been through a, a lot of this.
We also have a lot of connections in the industry, um, whether it's with VCs or, or just in talent in, in general. And so, um, you know, we can make connections. Um, we can help them with their pitches if they're going out trying to raise money, um, and just really kind of, uh, help them with best practices.
Aaron: Yeah,
Alex: right on.
Aaron: Right on. When you said that you were catching a lot of people, what year was this? What was the event? What was the, was this like the big layoffs that occurred two years ago?
Mike: Well, there have been a lot of layoffs, but even before the layoffs there was just a lot of people leaving the startup, new companies.
And, um, I think that. When we started, it was end of 2019, beginning 2020. Oh, so just before the pandemic. So this is pre covid. Yeah, just like [00:13:00] Right. Pre Covid. But back then it was a lot easier to get funded.
Alex: Yeah. Yeah. So I got two questions sort of, uh, related there. One is a sort of a strategy question. One is like a super important question.
I'll start with a super important question, which is how did you come up with the name Dream Haven? Yeah. I'm fascinated about naming. Yeah. You know, it's like naming so hard. It's, it's hard. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mike: It's hard because most of the names that you come up with, they're already taken. And so Uhhuh, you just, we did multiple rounds of brainstorming, you know, where people are just coming up with all these names.
We had people throughout the company submitting names into the process. Our steering team, which is like our executive committee kind of group, um, really looked at. Looked at all these names, um, and we narrowed it down to a few. But, um, [00:14:00] I think Dream Haven really kind of came to the top. I fell in love with Dream Haven because it, um, it really kind of captures the feeling that we wanna have at this company.
Like a haven for Dreams. Like a, you know, one of the ideas, we want this to be a great place for creators to do their best work, you know, and that, and that sort of to me means that the environment and the company is really supporting that creative process. And that means you're not always on the path.
Sometimes you think you're on the path and you find out you're not on the path. You have to switch paths. And it's just a very sort of, can be very chaotic and very, very messy. And, um, you want it to feel supportive and safe. For people to be able to innovate. Yeah. So dream hate tool, so the name
Alex: fits. Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, I get exactly what you're saying. And that support and the, the ability to give teams the, the space to get on a different path, et [00:15:00] cetera. Often that comes down to time and time. Yeah. As we all know is, is money. Um, so how are you setting things up as a new company to be able to afford to do that?
Mike: Yeah. So, um. I would say for the first year or so, um, my wife Amy and I, um, funded the company. As we kind of looked around, we really didn't have to look very hard because people were just contacting us. As soon as they found out we were doing something, they were very interested in. I, I guess it
Alex: helps to have that big list of like, number one franchises on the resume.
That doesn't work, I think helps a lot. Is that, that's advice for anyone coming up in industry? Just have like eight to 10 Yeah. Billion dollar franchises on your resume. Yeah. Key to success. It helps. Got it. Okay. Right on. Did you announce how much you raised? I know that's a very personal question. I
Mike: didn't announce anything.
No.
Alex: Okay. Do you wanna much you raised
Mike: on the, and. [00:16:00]
Alex: You're not, you're not gonna say how much you raised? No. Okay. Alex is like, pretty good.
Mike: Okay. Here is my No, because the problem is that when you start talking about that and that becomes the headline, and that's what everybody's talking about. We just wanna keep it on that.
Yep. The, the games in the company.
Alex: Right on. No, I love that. The, the other question I had, which I, you, that period of time, I, I think you already said something like this, that there were a lot of folks that kind of exiting places that had done, have, have done big games, you know, especially like some of the free to play games, et cetera.
And were starting new studios. And in that, I think 19, 20, 21, before, before 22, I think a lot of companies did get funded. Um, and there were kind of a, a, a lot of companies that were sort of working towards building a game that, uh, was designed to be a big game to rival some of the big, you know, billion dollar games that were out there.
And that was a investment thesis, uh, of that. Time. I think that's kind of past [00:17:00] now. Yeah. But you sort of conceptualized something different. Was that intentional? Like, I know it was intentional, but was that like looking at past experience thinking, well, I know this is a model that I like and work, so this is what I want to try and bring to the future?
Or were you thinking about what other folks were doing at all? And you know, that seems either, oh, that's interesting, but no, or I don't think that's a good idea, but no, I'm just curious about the strategy behind the,
Mike: so I think we're always looking around at what other people are doing and what's working and, and what's not working.
I think that, you know, when we first set out the belief that we had is, and what we've seen work in the past is you get a strong, capable team. And they're able to navi navigate all the twists and turns of, of game development. And so often you start off thinking you're gonna make a thing. And what that is ends up changing a lot [00:18:00] during the course of development, and the stronger teams are able to navigate that and end up producing something really incredible.
And so that's kind of what we were trying to capture. That's not to say that, you know, the, the idea, the game, the genre, the positioning, those things are all very important. So you have a thesis when you go in and you start developing a game. Like there's, um, there's an area of the market that you feel is underserved or maybe the leader in the genre, you can see some major issue that's holding it back from being more successful, that you feel like you have a solution to like any of those things.
I think are, are really important. But as you go into development and you start playing the game, you find out whether, whether the, whether the design is working and accomplishing those goals or not. And usually in my experience, the answer is it's [00:19:00] not. And you have to go and make some, some changes and iterate, try out new things, you know, and then a ton of polish.
Alex: Yeah.
Mike: I don't know if I answered your question, but
Alex: you answered a better, better question than the one I asked. Um, but you know, so back in, you know, my bungee days, we used to talk about the blizzard model, which I don't know that it, it was a thing, but we thought it was a thing which was, I think essentially that which, which is basically just the best possible execution, you know?
Yeah. And I know I've always believed that was a result of iteration, but I think you're, you're saying yes and. Also a result of kind of being honest with yourself of like, is this doing what we want it to do? And not being afraid to say no.
Mike: Well, yeah, but that's, that's also part of the iterative process, right?
Yeah. So you have to be willing to change the things that aren't working and Yeah. Go back. And sometimes that means we, [00:20:00] we canceled, we went back and looked, and I think Blizzard canceled like half of the projects that we started. Wow. We never, of course, set out as like, oh, we think it's a great idea to cancel half of the things that we do.
Of course not. You know, it's always painful every time you have to say, no, um, this isn't working for one reason or another, or we don't think that, um. We think that the market has moved on. We think that the opportunity cost of trying to fix the game is way higher than the potential of what this can achieve in the market.
You know, all of those things are potential reasons for, for canceling something, but it's never easy.
Alex: Yeah. Yep. Yep. I think Supercell has does something similar, you know, with just a really high bar. Yeah. And re a results speak for themselves. I guess, I don't know if you want to
Aaron: answer this question, but it's, uh, but it's, it's related to what you said with canceling games and why you would cancel [00:21:00] 'em and stuff.
And, and I don't know if this is true, this could just be like internet rumors, but you remember that cosmic horse y'all did for a while? I think it was like the first mount you could buy. I bought it. They say that that horse itself made so much money, it made more money than all of StarCraft two made, or more than StarCraft two made.
And I don't know if that's true, but, uh, is it true?
Mike: I don't think, I don't think it's true. Okay, cool. That's good to hear. I think if you wanna talk about, if you just wanna take all of that revenue and say this is all profit and then you wanna look at the profit of StarCraft two, maybe you're closer.
Aaron: Oh, I see what you're saying.
Yeah. Right. '
Mike: cause Wow. Is a big game. A fair way to
Aaron: look at it. Yeah, that's true. That's a better way to look at it. You're right.
Mike: You know, StarCraft two, um, was a very expensive project.
Aaron: Yeah.
Mike: And one of the reasons it was so expensive is because of all of the single player pre-rendered cinematics, which were awesome.
Yeah. So we did spend a ton of money on that,
Aaron: which are [00:22:00] so cool. Yeah.
Mike: They are so cool. And that franchise is so awesome. Yeah. So, you know, I don't, I don't know. I don't know if it really matters. The game is awesome.
Aaron: Yeah, it is awesome. Yeah.
Mike: Okay. That's good to know. I'm gonna sleep better, you
Aaron: know, I used to collect mounts and pets.
I love it.
Alex: Right on. Well, I thought maybe we should get in the way back machine a little bit and talk about, oh yeah, let's go there. Um, like the formative years, I, you grew up in SoCal, I think, right?
Mike: I did, yeah.
Alex: Grew up in SoCal College. SoCal, and have lived in SoCal. So you are as. OC as they come, right
Mike: la?
Well, so I grew up in the valley, San Fernando Valley. Okay. I went to UCLA, so LA really greater LA until after college. I got a job down in Orange County in Irvine with Western Digital. That was my first job out of college. The, the
Alex: hard drive makers, they Western Digital? Yeah. Is that's the one. Yeah. [00:23:00]
Mike: So they also had a division that made network cards and I got a job in the network card division writing test software to test their network cards.
Alex: Nice. Yeah. Were you a CS major in in college?
Mike: I wasn't. I was double E. But I loved computers. And so what is Double E? Uh, electrical engineering. Oh, electrical, okay. Cool. Yeah, electrical engineering. So, you know, I, it's, it's a
Alex: little further on the nerd graph from
Mike: cs, right? Is it a little further up? It might be.
Yeah. Um, you know, I was just really interested in understanding how stuff worked. Yes. I was just fascinated and it's just amazing. We use all these devices and we just really don't understand how they work. Yeah. Um, and so I thought, okay, well electrical engineers must know they're building these things.
They must know how it all works. And so I was very fascinated with that. And as I got into electrical engineering, I just went more and more on the digital side and then computer architecture and [00:24:00] then low level programming. And then, I mean, that's kind of as, as far as I went, I took a class in c programming that was an elective.
It wasn't even for my major. Um, just 'cause I was interested in learning it. And then, so while I was there, I had a couple classes with this guy Alan Adham, and he was CS and e and Alan was completely driven. He knew exactly what he wanted to do. He was gonna start up a game company after college. He'd already published a couple of games for the Apple two and Commodore 64, and he started recruiting me just, you know, Hey Mike, here's what I'm planning to do.
This is, you know, I think you should join me. And I'm like, I, I don't actually have a programming background. I didn't study programming, I don't know anything about writing games. And so I actually had him come, um, come over to my house and pitch my dad. With, so my dad could hear the pitch or whatever, and my dad said, [00:25:00] yeah, this sounds very risky.
You, I, you know, I don't think you should do it. So at first, I turned him down and I said, you know, okay, I'm just gonna stay at Western Digital. I, I think this isn't right. And then Alan came back and, and asked again and, um. I think his selling point was, look, Mike, it's not rocket science. We're both really smart.
We can figure out how to do all of this stuff. I can help you. And then, um, he also talked about how the gaming industry was like this very rare situation where you could have a couple people sitting in a room with very low capital investment, creating something that could reach thousands of people.
Right. And back then you were manufacturing, you know, you were, you were printing discs and selling them, but still, um, in terms of the creation, you know, very small investment that could actually scale pretty well. And so I just [00:26:00] decided to take the leap of faith. I was only at Western Digital for about six months.
Alex: Oh wow. Okay. Okay. And then, so you were in the very early days, you were writing code for the early games.
Mike: Yeah. Yeah. That was in C In C or
Alex: like assembly you said? Did you do write assembly code at some point?
Mike: So we did. Um, the, so back then the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis, um, those, those, uh, systems didn't have an operating system.
You're talking directly to the hardware. So the Super Nintendo was the 65 8 16 processor. Mm-hmm. Um, and the Sega was a 68,000.
Alex: Oh, right on. So, yeah. That's cool. So, uh, that was, uh, so the
Mike: 65 8 16 actually was, um, sort of a, a 16 bit version of the 65 0 2. Right. Which is what the Apple two used, you know, back in the day.
And so it was actually pretty easy to port old Apple [00:27:00] two games. To the Super Nintendo, and that's what RPM racing was. And the Viking game too. Wasn't that, that was when you Yeah, Vikings was one of the, one of the first games, although that wasn't a port that was totally original. Totally original. Yeah.
That's cool. And it's actually, um, another interesting story. So we did a lot of work with Interplay Productions in the early days. Um, all it started off, we were doing these ports for them, porting their games from the, um, PC to the Macintosh or the miga, but they had actually approached us to write a scripting engine that they could use for their console games.
And they had hired Alan to do that. And so one of Alan's first projects was writing this scripting engine. And as part of the deal, we um, got a. Royalty free license to continue using the engine. And so that Lost Vikings was built on that engine. Oh, that's cool.
Alex: Oh, right on. We had, we had, uh, Brian, uh, Fargo on, [00:28:00] uh, last year and he, he, he told a bit of that story from his perspective.
So it's fascinating the relationship with the between two, I don't know how many people even know about that part of gaming history, but it's That's super fascinating.
Mike: Yeah. Brian was sort of like, uh, he was a mentor to Alan.
Alex: Right on. So like, but when you were in, growing up in, in high school, so this must have been, I'm guessing we're similar age, like eighties, I'm guessing?
Mike: Yeah. I graduated high school in 85.
Alex: Okay. Right on. And what, did you have like a computer in the house or was tech or games? We did, we had a
Mike: IBM pc. PC two floppy disks. Nice.
Alex: Had IBMI had, I had PC
Mike: four,
Alex: I had this smack in, in the house. Um, what, what were you, were you playing games in high school?
Mike: Oh yeah, we had a bunch of games.
I remember there was a dungeon crawler called Temple of aps Shy.
Aaron: Temple of aps Shy.
Mike: [00:29:00] Huh. So we, I played a bunch of that. You know, you'd go out and you'd go on adventures. You have to go back to town, sell your stuff, buy stuff. Um, it was pretty fun. You know, we also played, um, some of the m Microsoft Decathlon, Microsoft Flight Simulator.
Oh yeah. The flight simulator, this is like one of the very early versions of flight simulators, so they only had the terrain really mapped out around the airports. And so one of my friends used to come over and, um, we'd chart these long flights, you know, from one airport to another airport. Sometimes it took like a couple hours for the flight to happen.
And so we'd set it up going and then we'd play, play a game of risk while, while it was flying. And then when we got far enough and we'd, we'd land the risk.
Aaron: That's great. Are the, are the board games like d and d and stuff like that
Mike: or, um, a little bit of d and d. I didn't really have a great d and d [00:30:00] group, so it was really mostly me just reading the books.
Yeah. And, um, making up my own very imbalanced dungeons, you know?
Alex: Awesome. All right. But so you, so you, when you got to UCLA, you were kind of, I don't know if it's technically minded, but you were like, you wanted to know how things work. You wanted to sort of open the lid and, and just see how it, Alex
Mike: I skipped something really important.
Mm-hmm. Because you asked about games. We actually, um, got a gaming console. Oh, okay. Which one? The ballet professional arcade.
Alex: Oh, okay.
Mike: It was a higher end competitor, the Atari 2,600. And the special thing about this one was you could get a basic cartridge for it that let you program it.
Aaron: That's
Mike: cool. And so it was like.
It had a little keypad built into the, to the console?
Alex: Yeah,
Mike: like a calculator keypad. And you, it, uh, the cartridge came with like these colored overlays, [00:31:00] so you could, um, type in keywords like, uh, with different shift like color shift codes, like say like blue five is like go-to or something like that. Oh my god.
And you could type in these programs. And that was my first exposure to programming.
Alex: Wow. This is awesome. And did they, did they send you programs that were just like printed on paper that you would then kind of do that to like. Put them in, or, so there was
Mike: a, there was a guy who put out a newsletter every month that I subscribed to.
I was in sixth grade. Right. Um, but I'm getting this newsletter and I'm so excited about it. And I'd get these, um, every month he would publish, people would send in programs and he'd publish them and I would type them in on the thing, and then I'd have to save them off, um, to cassette tape. It had an interface.
300 bod. Oh yeah. So relatively slow, you know? Um, you'd save it off to cassette tape and you'd load it up next time you wanted to play, because there was no, you know, [00:32:00] permanent storage on the device.
Alex: Yeah. But that was like the very, very much the sophisticated console, like compared to the 2,600.
Aaron: Yes.
Alex: Yeah.
Aaron: Yeah. It looks really cool.
Alex: Was that like you asked for that, or is that like your dad? Or your parents like picked that out to bring on? No,
Mike: so the Atari 2,600 came out and, um, I think our friend up the street might've gotten it and we're like, oh man, we need to get one of these. And they were selling it at Fedco, which was like this discount store that um, you know, if you wanted a good deal, you go to Fedco.
So my dad was trying to teach us to, you know, don't make a purchase like this right away, you know, gotta shop around. And so we went and, and looked and it turned out, you know, they had the ballet professional arcade also. And so my brother, sister, and I. Mostly my brother and I, I think my sister was kind of along for the ride because she wasn't really very interested in this thing.
But we just, we were gonna, we pulled all our money together, all [00:33:00] of our savings to put towards this valley professional arcade, and we still couldn't quite afford it. And so my dad made up the difference. Oh,
Aaron: right on.
Mike: And I remember getting that thing. I was so excited.
Aaron: The box looks great. It's all colorful.
Yeah, it was
Mike: awesome.
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Alex: You have two siblings, where are you in the, in the order?
Mike: I'm the oldest.
Alex: You're the oldest. Okay. And did your, did your parents, were they working, did they do anything sort of technical or entertainment adjacent or
Mike: No, no.
Um, my dad was a florist. Okay. Um, it was a family business started by my grandfather. Oh, wow. He and my uncle were partners in it. And uh, so we grew up basically helping out at the flower shop, shop on holidays. They delivered flowers to the studios. They were in Burbank, so that was probably the closest they got to [00:37:00] Hollywood.
And my mom was, she was a school teacher until we were born. And then after that she taught at a preschool. Oh, cool.
Alex: And that's awesome.
Mike: She was, she used to teach third grade before that.
Alex: Right on. Definitely some kind of entrepreneurship in the, in the past, you know, and in the, in the family. That's, um,
Mike: yep.
Alex: That's very cool. Okay, well, so I was gonna say before, I mean, it sounds like when you got to UCLA, games were, was a thing that you were into, but I'm imagine, I don't know, I don't know, put words in your mouth, but was like, like career in games, even sort of a thing that you had thought of? Like it,
Mike: I hadn't even considered that.
Alex: No. Yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't until Alan was like. Mike on, we gotta go do this.
Aaron: You know, you said you didn't know anything about how to make games and stuff and coding. Did the ballet kind of give you a little confidence there? 'cause you to see it from nothing to something?
Mike: Yeah. You know, not really because, not really, there's just a huge leap from what I was exposed to in terms of programming on the [00:38:00] Valley relative to like, you know, the types of games you'd get on like a Nintendo Yeah.
Console or something, you know, I, I looked at that, I'm like, yeah, I have no idea how they're doing any of that. And Alan would just break it down and he'd say, no, it's actually not that complicated. Here's what's going on behind the scenes. So that gave me a little bit of confidence.
Alex: Yeah, right on. All right.
Well, so, and then, so you get outta school, you're at Western Digital for a hot six months. You decide to throw all that away. Your, your big career in hard drive innovation. Um, and you go and join Alan and Blizzard is born essentially.
Aaron: Yeah. Was it boring at Western Digital? Did you like doing that work or was it like,
Mike: it was not boring.
No, it was fun. I liked it. Oh, cool. Yeah.
Alex: Yeah. So I mean, it sounds like that was a, at the moment, not just in hindsight, but at the moment, a big decision. You asked your dad for [00:39:00] advice. Yeah. He gave you certain advice. You ended up doing something different. This all sounds very reminiscent. This is kind of my, my origin story too.
Um, but was that really, was that like, at the moment, was that a hard kind of agonizing decision? I don't know. Like, I've got kids now who are at sort of at that age and like every decision is. Rightfully so is the biggest decision of the life. You know,
Mike: it was a hard decision. What, what helped make it a little bit easier was I think just, um, you know, I was pretty ambitious and I think it was like the financials of it made it a little bit easier, believe it or not.
'cause it's like this huge risk, you know, going off and doing this thing. But when I had taken the job at Western Digital, I had another offer. So I had done an internship before I graduated and that company made me an offer that was higher than, than the Western digital job, but I wanted to stay in Southern California.
The other one was up in the Bay Area and I ended up choosing that and they knew. They were below my [00:40:00] other offer, and what they promised me was, in six months you'll, we'll give you a six month review and you'll get a salary increase. And so six months came up and I'm having these conversations with Alan.
So six months come up, comes up and I get my review and they give me like a 3% raise prorated to six months. So one and a half percent raise, which is like nothing. And it's still not even close to what I would've been making at the other company. I'm just like, wow, this is gonna go so slow. Mm-hmm. I had no idea.
And so I'm like, okay, let's talk some more Alan. You know? And I think that just kind of made me a lot more open to taking, you know, a risk.
Alex: Yeah, makes sense. Yeah. And you're young, so. What he got to lose.
Mike: That's, so, actually that's what my cousin, my cousin, um, that I really looked up to. I told him about the, the situation and his, his advice was, look, [00:41:00] you're young.
What have you got to lose? If it doesn't work out, just go get another job somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and that made a lot of sense too.
Alex: Yeah. So how, how long from when you guys started till you weren't anxious about that decision anymore? Like when did it, when did it get to a point where you're like, Hey, I think this is gonna work?
Mike: Um, I never looked back on the decision, so I never thought, oh man, I should have stayed at Western Digital. I was learning so much. I mean, every, everything we were doing was new and we were learning and we were super excited. You know, shipping games is so exciting and creating something that people can play.
Like I always wanted to figure out how to use technology to do cool things, which is like exactly gaming that is using technology to do cool things and entertain people. So I never looked back on the Western digital decision the first few years, though from a cashflow perspective were [00:42:00] very tough.
Alex: Hmm.
Mike: So Alan and I. Didn't really, didn't take a salary for the first couple of years. We did have to loan money to the company to make sure we were making payroll. We eventually had to get a, we, we set up a secured credit line with a local bank. So we got our parents to deposit money into an account that we could borrow against, and we sold the company in 94.
We had ma completely maxed out our credit line. So I mean, it, cashflow was very difficult. And, um, we never really caught up from a cashflow perspective until after we sold the company.
Alex: Really, even
Mike: with like Warcraft two. And we sold, so we sold the company in 94 before Warcraft one.
Alex: Oh, okay. What, so how many times did.
Blizzard change hands.
Mike: So that's a great question. Um, so we sold, originally we sold to [00:43:00] Davidson Associates, which made educational software.
Alex: That's right.
Mike: Okay. And then
Alex: that was Ken, was that Ken and Roberta Williams?
Mike: No, that was Bob and Jan Davidson.
Alex: Okay.
Mike: And then Ken and Roberta Sierra. And so what happened, that's Sierra,
Alex: that was the second.
Mike: CUC came in and they bought Davidson and Sierra on the same day to create CUC software.
Alex: Got it.
Mike: Um, then they changed their name, descendant. They sold off software to a French company called Havas Interactive, which was owned by Vedi. And then, you know, lots of drama ensued and they ended up basically acquiring a majority stake in Activision by contributing.
The software business, including us, and a bunch of cash
Alex: wasn't universal part of this equation at some point.
Mike: Yeah. Vivendi ended up merging with Universal to create Vivendi Universal, and then they're the ones who, uh, ended up acquiring part of Activision, [00:44:00] basically spinning off software.
Alex: Right. I remember, but I had kind of forgotten that whole chain.
Like I, I do remember meeting Alan in Ken Williams' office up at Sierra, and that would've been right. I think it was like the week Diablo shipped and we were giving them a demo of, of myth. I dunno if you remember the Oh, nice. Fun game myth. Yeah. And it, it's remarkable how you were able to make the studio thrive, like really thrive through all of those.
Changes. I mean like each one of those could have been just remarkably distracting and new folks in the mix could have like taken, even ran randomized, et cetera. How, how did you kill it? You know, like how did you do so good through all of that change?
Mike: Yeah, so we tried to insulate the rest of Blizzard as much as possible for all of the [00:45:00] change in turmoil that was happening above us.
So what, I guess maybe to back up, you know, we, when we sold the company to Davidson Associates, right? We're just like four years in, right? Four years out of college, something like that. And so we don't have a ton of experience dealing with mergers and acquisitions and companies getting acquired. All we knew is we wanted to make great games, we wanted to focus on game development.
We didn't really wanna have this be part of like a big corporate thing. And the pitch to us was. Which I think sounds like the pitch to like any company getting acquired, you know, now that I have more experience, which is, um, don't worry, nothing's gonna change. The reason we want to acquire your company is because we love what you're doing.
You guys know about entertainment software. We don't really know about that. Our business is educational software. You just keep doing exactly what you're doing. Um, you'll have full creative autonomy [00:46:00] and control. You'll also have, have access to our sales and distribution and capital resources to be able to continue to know doing what you're doing.
And that pitch sounded great. Of course, we never got any of that in writing that. Like we, we had this freedom or whatever, but we operated as if we did. That was our agreement. That's what we signed up for. And so what ended up happening is, you know, I think two years later, Bob and Jan were out. And new management was in because they got acquired and Bob and Jan left.
And so our first conversation with them was sitting down with this new person saying, okay, well here's how we wanna operate, basically, um, you leave us alone and we'll continue making great games that do really well. And by then we had started to build up a track record and, you know, each successive game that we released did even better than the last one.
So our new [00:47:00] owners became believers really quick and they became very supportive owners that let us operate the company with sort of this illusion that we still owned it.
Alex: That's
Mike: great. And we operated it as if it was still ours, even though it wasn't. But like, that was the mentality that we had that, um, we're gonna make all the decisions using, basically prioritizing long-term value creation is how we thought of it.
Which makes it very easy to not ship a broken game.
Alex: Yeah.
Mike: Even if you're gonna miss Christmas, or even if you're gonna miss whatever quarterly estimate that you thought you were going to hit, like it's just a no brainer. If the game is not at its full potential, you gotta fix it. And then you fix it and you release it and it does great.
And then everybody's like, oh, okay. I guess it's, things aren't broken, we're not gonna, not gonna mess with it. And so [00:48:00] for a long time we had a series of, uh, owners and I had a series of people that I reported to that really just were helpful.
Alex: Yeah. That's a, that's awesome. BI think that's rare. It's like the way you just summarized the, the alignment of.
Operate this way. Success comes. Success comes because we're operating this way. Sounds exceptionally logical, but I think it doesn't always happen. I know, but yeah, we would, we would say it too.
Aaron: We would say that like you could trust the Blizzard game. It's gonna work. There's gonna be no bugs. It's gonna work, it's
Mike: gonna be well, and if it doesn't work, we're gonna fix it.
Right? Yeah. Like we, so, I mean, we, we didn't have, some of the launches were not so smooth. Right. We just were committed to fixing them, and we did, and we fixed them. And then I think people don't dwell on the fact that we had some, some issues. The World of Warcraft launch was not a awesome launch, you know, it took [00:49:00] us months to be able to get our servers to be stable and to handle the capacity and all that stuff.
Mm-hmm. People also talk about the Diablo three launch, not being one of the smoothest launches either, but, um, ultimately the, the thing is that the games were, were good and, um, you know, we did what it took to, to get them working again.
Alex: Yeah. That was one of the things I was maybe most curious about. And you've talked a bit about what goes into that unbroken string of just really outstanding games.
How do you, how does Mike sort of make that happen? Like how like. What is it about the way that you either think about games or manage teams or recruit or like what part of that whole thing is sort of your way?
Mike: Well, so I was in a unique situation, which I think you, you also can relate [00:50:00] to, right? But as being a founder in a, you know, organization that, um, you know, a larger organization, there is a certain amount of power that you have sort of like moral authority to be able to say, say stuff, say the truth, say, you know, what you're willing to do.
That people who aren't founders maybe don't, don't have, and maybe they're also a little bit more concerned about whether or not they're gonna keep their job. So they're not willing to sort of stick their neck out and say, no, no, no, this, this isn't ready. We're not gonna ship it. Or some, something like that.
We had a very aligned group of people at Blizzard. People came to Blizzard because a lot of them were fans of the Blizzard games. And so they understood what the brand, like the brand promise, what the brand stood for to people and would hold us accountable when they thought we weren't living up to that, which is great.[00:51:00]
And so often the team and the leadership of the the team, they know what the right decision is. They know what the game needs to achieve its potential. They know what the right decision is for the players for the long term of the business, but then they're up against, yeah, but our goal for this year is X and we're not gonna achieve our goal.
And so how do you balance those two? And I think that's where, you know, having a founder led studio with, uh, strong values to be able to say, no, we have to live up to our brand expectation. That's our commitment to our players. And that is gonna pay dividends in the long run because, um, it's very difficult.
You know, you only have one chance to make a first impression sort of thing. You know, if people mm-hmm come and they try the game and they don't like it, then you maybe lost them forever. So, gotta make sure that they have a great experience right off the bat. At least that, that was what we tried to do.[00:52:00]
And so I think setting it up so people are empowered to fight for what they think is the right decision. And then having a structure of checks and balances so that we can debate and our argue these things and come up with what we think is the right holistic decision. Taking everything into account and then having the agency to be able to actually execute on that.
So all that has to work and I think that. You know, as you, you're part of a large organization, especially a public organization, there is so much pressure on the, the shorter term financial results that makes it very, very difficult for most companies. And eventually the short term pressures and the Wall Street pressures ultimately win and start kind of almost forcing some of these decisions that aren't necessarily the best for the games, for the players, even for the employees.
Alex: So, I mean, so it [00:53:00] sounds like you were able to navigate that because you had the track record. And I assume that when you were part of, say, at, you know, at like a part of Activision Blizzard that, um, the, the, the management whose jobs were on, who were, you know, accountable to the board and Wall Street. I.
Took that into consideration, I'm assuming, when planning things like dates or were there times where you, you were just like, look, we need more time, so we are gonna miss this date. So you're gonna have to go and revise Yes. What our, what our reporting is. And, and that was the decision that got made.
Mike: Yeah.
I mean, you do everything you can to try to try to, uh, so everybody, um, working on these games, I think, you know, this wants to ship them as soon as possible. Time they want to get them out there, probably more than anybody. And if it's not ready, you have to make an assessment. So the leadership has to make an assessment.
[00:54:00] Usually the executive producer will have an opinion about this. And then that would be a conversation that we would, would talk about. And no amount really of will or desire is necessarily gonna change the state of the game. If you know early enough you can put more resources on it and maybe make a difference, but usually, um, you've tried and it didn't work,
Alex: right?
Yeah.
Mike: We tried not to make commitments that we couldn't keep. And so we hesitated to announce things publicly so that, because once you announce it publicly, it's a lot harder to move. But internally, you know, you have to make estimates and it has to go into a, a, a budget and. And then you do your best to hit those things.
Alex: Yeah. You make it sound so easy, so logical. At least not easy, logical, not always logical. [00:55:00] Let's shift to the future. I guess like, what I love about games is that it changes all the time. You know, like I, I had a 2,600 growing up and those games are still awesome, but, you know, just to look at the progression of, of where the tech and the art and the play and everything has gone as bonkers.
Um, and same thing on the business side from, you know, packaged goods to digital goods, to free to play to all these different platforms. And just thinking about like what our studio is doing now is something I'd never thought I would ever be doing, which is I, I'm basically building games inside of other games and that's a whole new thing.
And I'm just curious if like. If you, if part of your vision for Dream Haven contemplates a future that maybe looks different from sort of like the model that you and I kind of grew up with where, you know, you would make a game and you would sell it and then there's a point of sale and people play and there's this [00:56:00] value chain, whatever.
You know, it's like, are you doing things that are interesting from that perspective about like either different business models, different platforms, even different like length game lengths, that kind of price points, any of that kind of stuff.
Mike: So, um, there's a lot of different ways to think about this stuff.
I think we probably think about business model last and think about the opportunity that we see, the type of game that we're. That we wanna make. And then we think about like, what is the business model that we can wrap on that, that, um, is the best for, for the game that incentivizes the right thinking for the development team that is gonna gonna be best for, for the game.
And so we're very early in, you know, um, we think we talk a lot about layering in complexity over time. And so, you know, starting Dream Haven and starting these studios and building these new teams, working with Unity and [00:57:00] Unreal. And for some of these people working with them for the first time. 'cause you know, blizzard used a lot of.
Proprietary engines that we had developed in-house. So not all of our team members have had experience working with Unity in Unreal. So that's kind of a new thing. Shipping games on Steam, that's new for me. I've been shipping on our owned platform for all of these years, battle net. And so, um, I think not trying to jump in and boil the ocean and, and do too many new complex things all at once was one of our, um, goals.
And so these, I think these first two games that we're developing internally are really trying to just be just games. They're just games that are trying to be really fun. And I think following that, we can start thinking about how to do more complicated things, complex things.
Alex: Right on. I was gonna [00:58:00] ask if any other platforms besides PC and console are interesting to you, but I guess that's a down the road kind of thing or.
Mike: Yeah. You know, I think we're fans of vr, we would have to have the right idea to go and pursue that. Um, and I don't know what what that is, but I think that there's a lot of exciting things happening in, in vr. But I would say yeah, pro right now we're probably mostly focused on, um, PC and console, and then mobile is something that we're very interested in if we had the right things.
And Sunder Folk, um, is a bit of a hybrid because it does use a mobile interface to interact with the game. And so, you know, the game is basically being released across all of these devices. Oh, very cool.
Alex: That it's cool. Very cool. What kinds of things are you playing if you have time to play games these days?
Um,
Mike: so most recently, uh, blueprints. And unreal
Alex: it like you like making blueprints and unreal.[00:59:00]
So, or you BA building a building.
Mike: Building a building. Yeah, building a building so that I'm still, I'm playing Mecca Beum, you know, which is a game we're publishing, but that we fell in love with and have really been en enjoying the game. And so super excited to be involved in it now.
Alex: That's cool. That's awesome.
All right, Mike, well thank you so much for spending a morning with us. Are you an early riser? In general.
Mike: Um, I am, since our daughter was born 10 years ago, but before that I was never a newly riser.
Alex: Yeah. It's funny, funny how having kids will change a lot of things about a person. Um, yeah. My morning is my, I love the mornings 'cause it's like the only time of day that I have completely to myself.
Mike: Yeah. I can understand that. The problem is I'm just too tired in the morning, but
Alex: Well, you gotta, you gotta get yourself some coffee. Yeah,
Mike: that's right.
Alex: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for spending [01:00:00] the morning with us. Yeah. The new games look fantastic. Have you announced any, I'm guessing you haven't announced dates yet,
Mike: so Wild Gate is gonna be doing its second community preview, uh, next week.
Oh. We haven't announced a date for it other than to say it'll be coming later this year.
Alex: Right on.
Mike: And then Sunder folk is already out.
Alex: Cool. The community preview is that open?
Mike: It is not open, but I believe it's gonna be pretty easy for people who are in to invite, invite their friends. So if you know anybody who is in, um, then it'll, I know a guy.
Do we know anybody? His name
Aaron: is Mike. Do we know anybody? Yeah. I'm guessing you're in. Yeah.
Mike: Oh yeah. That's no problem. Yes. Yeah.
Alex: All right. Thanks so much, Mike. Best of luck with Dream Haven in the games. Uh, I know you don't need the luck, but yeah. Good luck to you. No, we could use all the luck. We can do. Yeah.
Thank you. Thanks for coming on, Mike. We'll see you around. Yeah. Thank you guys. Have you checked [01:01:00] out Dream Havens new games?
Aaron: I, I tried to play the, the play test, the, the community play test, but, and it said it was over, well, you got in late. It got full. It got full or whatever. I don't know. It's over. And I was like, dang it.
I was so busy. I'm sorry. I didn't play if like, honestly, I didn't play any other games, so it wasn't like. I was playing another game, you know, I was
Alex: Mm.
Aaron: You know, I was just really busy. And then I finally got to it, I sat down, I installed it, and it was on, I could hear the music from the lobby, uh, from the, the thing the whole time.
And then I walked over there and it's like, sorry, can't log in.
Alex: Was that, was that Wild Gate or, yeah. Wonderful. Wild Gate. Wild Gate. That, that's the one with the in space, right? The co-op. Yeah, I think so. That looks so cool.
Aaron: Yeah. I hope it opens up again and I
Alex: can play. Oh, you're not gonna get invited back if you didn't use the codes.
There's no way.
Aaron: Those things are precious, you know, and the other thing too [01:02:00] is, um, that console, he mentioned the Ballet Astro Cade, or Professional Arcade, what he was saying about that, that, you know how you can make your own games. So if I was a kid and, and, um, other guests have mentioned this, where they're like, they feel like there's, they're stupid and that's, that is like what allowed them to.
Be successful. You know, Mike was really smart where he was like, yeah, you know, I didn't really understand. Like, I think he, he probably wants to understand more before he di he goes in, like you, he was saying he brought his dad over to hear the pitch and you know, he, you know, right, right, right, right. He checked all his, his lower, he dotted all his lowercase j's and you know, crossed all his T's or whatever you say.
I'm the other way around where if I played this console, I'd be like, yeah, I'm gonna make the next, you know, halo with it. That kind of thing. Do you know what I mean? Uhhuh, where it's like, there is like a, what is that word? We've had guests be both ways, like either they're incredibly analytical and they check all their, you [01:03:00] know,
Alex: okay.
Little, little conservative, little, little pedantic in their approach and Exactly. You're like, fuck it, there's a cliff there. Let's jump. I can't see the bottom, but that's
Aaron: okay. Who knows? And then you, you end up like flying into like planet Mars. But that's, yeah. So that, that's, I actually thought, I was like, wow, maybe he played that console and he's gonna be like.
I'm gonna make video games, but it was like, it wasn't, I was like, I thought that was interesting. Or are you the other way? Are you more anali? You're analytical, aren't you? Oh, well, I, I, um, trust your
Alex: gut. Maybe if I would say I do tr you know, I, I, I am willing to do a thing without perfect information. You know, there are some people who need perfect information to make a decision.
They, they need to know this is the right decision because I analyzed all the data and I, you know, I've assessed whether this is correct or not. And then there are, for [01:04:00] me, I, I know there's a limit to how much I can own. You could like this, in my opinion, you can never have perfect information. So at some level, you, you have to have a, a desire, you know, or a passion for something.
And I'm willing to make decisions based on that. And sometimes they're not. Some, sometimes, you know, there's grains of salt there. It's like, well this may or may not work. I, and I'm willing to accept that. Yeah. But I, but I am, I am, I want to go on this journey because the destination seems good, but maybe more so the, the trip itself seems worth taking.
So, I dunno, maybe that puts me in the middle. Yeah. I like, I, I don't like jumping off cliffs where I, I can, I don't know where the bottom is. You know the guy that climbs
Aaron: a mountain that has the
Alex: documentary? Yeah. Alex, Alex Ho. Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron: So he said something once. Why are you shaking me? That's not me.
Alex: That's not me.
I would not know. That guy said something
Aaron: once it changed my life. Yeah. He climbed, I think he, the first
Alex: time he, uh, free solo. You're talking about that documentary free [01:05:00] solo. I watched that on an airplane. Oof. And I almost, yeah, I almost didn't get through, you know, that opening scene, I almost just shut the laptop, say, Nope, can't do it.
That's like the worst. But I had heard so, so much, so many good things about it, and I'm glad I watched it. It was phenomenal. Oh, it's a, that guy that guy's nuts, you know, he's a, a Rivian brand ambassador.
Aaron: Yeah.
Alex: Yeah.
Aaron: Actually I didn't know that. But yeah, that the, the other thing. Yeah. That's cool. So what does that mean?
Yeah, brand ambassador. Like, do they pay him? He's like a mascot or type thing. Yeah, they, I'm sure they, they gave him a truck, you know, and he drives it around. Oh yeah. He probably lives in it.
Alex: He's like a van guy. Yeah. Yeah. You know, if this doesn't work out, I'll just live in my truck. You know, I live in my like, super expensive electric truck.
I'll just drive a to a Walmart to charge it up. Yeah, dude. Little solar power. Yeah. You were, so, you were trying to make a, a, a thing about Alex Hol he said, what did he say that changed your life?
Aaron: It's what you just said. But he did it in a, in a [01:06:00] context. Where the, the fallout would be devastating. And, uh, for example, and no pun intended, fallout 'cause he'd fall.
He would fall, but he was climbing Yosemite and he got to the top. And the way, and I didn't know this about climbers like I found out after watching the documentary, they memorized where, where their hand and feet go the whole way up. So it's a me It's not like they're figuring it out as they go. Like they memorize it, they figure it out with ropes, and then they mm-hmm.
Fully memorize the entire And they have a route. Yeah. And they have a route and they know, it's literally the, the hands never change. Like they're always going to the same spot and the feet are always going and the, the moves you're using are the same. And he got to the top of Yosemite, he was like almost to the top and he got to a spot where he couldn't remember if his foot was a certain, was in a certain spot and.
He just went for it and like it was the right move. And then he got to the top [01:07:00] and then he like, and then he said like, I never want to do that again. Like, that was, that is like the dumbest thing you could do. Like he was, you know, he was explaining how that's not how you climb like that. Like you can't, like, and like he kind of broke it down a little bit and you know, like if it wasn't the right move, see a later alligator, you know, like the guy doesn't have any room.
Alex: Yeah. So it's like, so what, what did that change for you? Did that I thought about how I lived. I need to be, I need to be a little bit more careful that Did it make you think that? Yeah,
Aaron: like I lived, I lived certain, you know, I made certain relationships. I, you know mm-hmm. You say certain things around people, you stop, you stop smoking, start wearing your seatbelt, kind of.
No, but you know, it's like, it's like, okay, we've had, we've had investors on, on before and. They, they go through a ton. They, they memorize the routes. Right? Like they don't just, you know, like who, who are the top three that you would say we've had on [01:08:00] investors? Yeah. Like we've, well we had Bing on just, just recently and, and Mitch Laskey.
Yeah. Mitch. Those guys are top of their game. Yeah. And they're, they make, they have like, they don't pick that many people. Right. And they make like really good bets. That's right.
Alex: That's right. And they have a very high success rate. And you, and you know, it's like, it's kind of just bringing it back to Mike.
It's related, you know, it's like, it's like a willingness to say no. Yeah. Like he talked about that. It's a willingness. It's hard, it's hard to say No, it's hard to like, stop doing a thing or not do a thing that you think everybody thinks you should be doing or whatever. But that's. What gets you to great.
Aaron: Yeah, but there is a curve ball. I went into the grocery store the other day and there's a giant, seriously, this was like two days ago and, and, and like, and there was a giant setting there of. Of this toilet where a head comes out of it. What? Yeah, it's like a [01:09:00] meme. It's like even on
Alex: Fortnite. Oh, oh, the Skippity.
The skippity, whatever. Yeah. So if I was
Aaron: an investor and someone said, Hey, this is gonna be a multi, you know, million dollar franchise, Uhhuh, I would be like, get out of my office right now. And don't ever call that. No. Yeah,
Alex: you
Aaron: shouldn't. Yeah.
Alex: So there's
Aaron: those curve balls where that's not, you don't know.
It's,
Alex: it's, you know, in that scenario, it's okay to miss out on a few winners, you know?
Aaron: Yeah.
Alex: That, that's a thing that I've been, um, still, I'm still a student of, you know, it's like I, in the beginning of my career, um, we, we did very few things and we had, uh, you know, it's a different time and we got to, it took us a little while to get to success.
You know, the first few games we made were not, um, and by the time we got What do you mean they were not, marathon wasn't success. That was like our. Fourth game, you know, marathon was a success, but you know, ha Halo was a huge success, right? And then you get to the age of mobile where it's like fail fast or whatever, and you try a lot of things [01:10:00] and you get way more non non successes than successes.
And every once in a while you get something good. And then we're now in this era where, um, you kind of have to choose, you either like invest years and hundreds of millions at like, it's gotta be a sure thing, or you go as fast as you can, uh, and learn as quickly as you can and iterate your way through.
Not work, not work, not work. Start to work, start to work. Get better, get better. Now it's finally working, you know?
Aaron: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I'm gonna say something that, and I don't mean this in a negative way, but when you launched Marathon. Or whatever, like what was the game before? Marathon Pathways in a darkness.
Okay. And that one is not as successful as Marathon. Marathon was more successful than that. And myth was successful. Right. So when those games came out, would you say that there were fewer games? Like those games and the market? Because right now Oh yeah, it is. [01:11:00] No, it's a different time. Yeah, it would say a different time.
Time. It's like it is red Ocean, it's like thick red. It's like coagulated vampire blood red.
Alex: Yes, yes. It is a different time, but, but I mean that's the magic of the game industry is there's always. There's always a way to do something new. You know, we're not locked into some dis, we're not locked into distribute, like rigorous distribution, um, formats like film there, you know, film, there is a format and you can't really deviate If you want the theatrical di distribution, you know, you're, you're making a 90 to whatever, 120 minute long linear piece of entertainment games.
You're not locked into formats, you know, especially with digital distribution, you know, we have online games, we have single player games, we've got free to play games, we've got premium games, we've got games with subscriptions, subscription now. Yeah. It's all sort, all, all sorts of different things and, and it, it's, [01:12:00] it will continue to evolve, I think forever.
Um, and that's, that's where you find your blue ocean.
Aaron: Yeah. Thanks for the hope.
Alex: All right, well, on that note, um, on that hopeful note, thank you listeners for joining us. Hope you enjoyed our conversation with, uh, Mike Mohai. I did, uh, hall, hall of Famer. Um, such a profound impact on the industry, and I think he would say he's just getting started.
So, um, yeah, check out his new stuff. Right on. And, uh, thanks again for listening. We shall see
Aaron: you next time. See you later everybody. Thank you for listening to the Fourth Curtain Podcast. Visit us@thefourthcurtain.com to find our monthly newsletter and support the show via Patreon. The Fourth Curtain podcast is a production of Fourth Curtain Media, lovingly edited by Brian Hensley of Noise Floor Sound Solutions production support by May Lee, with Community Management by Doug Artman and Art Production by Paul Russell.
Thanks again for [01:13:00] listening.