Michael Morhaime

Michael Morhaime
Morhaime atBlizzCon2009
Born	(1967-11-03)November 3, 1967
Alma mater	University of California, Los Angeles(BE)
Occupation(s)	Business executive;video game developer
Known for	Co-founder and formerCEOofBlizzard Entertainment
Title	Founder and CEO of Dreamhaven
Spouse	Amy Morhaime ​ (m.2010)​
Awards	AIASHall of Fame Award (2001)

Michael Morhaime(born November 3, 1967) is an Americanvideo game developerand entrepreneur. He is the chief executive officer (CEO) and founder of Dreamhaven, located inIrvine, California.Morhaime is best known as the co-founder and the formerpresidentofBlizzard Entertainment,a subsidiary ofActivision Blizzard, Inc., that was founded in 1991 as Silicon & Synapse. He served on the Vivendi Games executive committee since January 1999, when Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. became a subsidiary of Vivendi Games.

Early life and education

Morhaime was born into aJewishfamily and graduated from Granada Hills High School in 1985. He is also an alumnus ofTriangle Fraternityand received hisbachelor's degreein Electrical Engineering in 1990 from theUniversity of California, Los Angeles(UCLA).

In sixth grade, Morhaime, along with his brother and sister, purchased a video game console called theBally Professional Arcade,first released in 1978. Morhaime discovered that the console was programmable, and he taught himself how to write simple games on it, building off of example programming code he found in a gaming newsletter.

As an electrical engineering student at UCLA, Morhaime focused more onhardwarethan onsoftware."I procrastinated a lot," he admitted.Things changed after he got an internship at aSan Josemicrochip company. In his internship there, he learned about circuit design, and when he returned to school he was ahead of his computer architecture class. "I used to be the guy that sat in the back," he said, but after his stint inSilicon Valley,he said, "I started sitting up front."

Career

Blizzard Entertainment

It was in that time period at UCLA that Morhaime met the two other people with whom he would createSilicon & Synapse,the company that would be renamed later as Blizzard Entertainment. The initial founders—Morhaime,Allen AdhamandFrank Pearce—rented a small office inIrvine, California,hoping the proximity to other companies would prove advantageous to them.

In 1995, Blizzard releasedWarcraft II,its first number one selling game. "It's probably the game that put Blizzard on the map," Morhaime said. Besides its large number of sales, "it was the first game you could play over the Internet with a good experience," which was a novelty at the time, as well as being a defining selling point for its later titles.

Blizzard's greatest success came with a hard but not unwelcome lesson. In planning for the release ofWorld of Warcraft(WoW) in late 2004, Morhaime thought that the market for the much larger and more interactive new game—the first in their history to require players to pay a monthly subscription fee—would grow slowly and would be an unpopular surprise to the gaming community. "We felt it was very likely the fee would be a deterrent for people, and thatWoWwould not sell as quickly as some of our previous games, "he said. All of Blizzard's production and marketing decisions were based on that assumption. To Blizzard's surprise (and very shortly later, terror)WoWsold extremely quickly, leaving the underprepared Blizzard unable to keep merchants supplied with the game for a short time. "For the whole first year, we scrambled to keep up with demand," he said. "It probably took years off of our lives."World of Warcrafthad approximately 11 million subscribers as of 2010. In 2017, Morhaime earned $12.3 million as the CEO of Blizzard.

On October 3, 2018, Morhaime announced he was stepping down as the company president and CEO, instead becoming an advisor to the company. Morhaime was replaced by J. Allen Brack, the executive producer onWorld of Warcraft.His advisory role concluded on April 7, 2019.

Dreamhaven

In 2020, Mike Morhaime founded Dreamhaven, a new video game company. The company is based in Irvine, California, and has two game development studios called Secret Door and Moonshot Games.Dreamhaven, Inc. operates under Moonwell Studios LLC.

Honors and awards

In 2008, Morhaime was inducted into theAcademy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame.On the same year, Morhaime was honored at the 59th AnnualTechnology & Engineering Emmy Awardsfor Blizzard's creation ofWorld of Warcraft.Along withDon DaglowofStormfront StudiosandJohn Carmackofid Software,Morhaime is one of only three designers or producers to accept awards at the Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards and at theAcademy of Interactive Arts & SciencesInteractive Achievement Awards.

Morhaime received the nationalErnst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awardin the Technology category in 2012.In 2019, Morhaime was appointed the 2019 Honor Award at the Gamelab Barcelona, in Spain for his success in the gaming industry.

Multimedia

In 2012, Morhaime made a cameo appearance onThe Guild,a web series about the lives of a gamers' online experiences with an MMORPG that draws references toWorld of Warcraft.He is known for his work with the gaming community, but also worked on the 2016 filmWarcraft: The Beginning.

Personal life

Morhaime (left) playing with ETC at BlizzCon 2009

In 2010, Morhaime married his long-time girlfriend Amy Chen.In 2017, Morhaime bought a mansion in a gatedRancho Miragecommunity inRiverside County,Californiafor $2.25 million.He is a member ofETC,ametalband formed of and by Blizzard employees, where he playsbass guitar.

External links

• Michael Morhaime's profileatMobyGames