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Michael "Mike" Morhaime (born November 3, 1967) is an American video game developer and entrepreneur. He is the chief executive officer (CEO) and founder of Dreamhaven, located in
Irvine, California Irvine () is a master-planned city in South Orange County, California, United States, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Irvine Company started developing the area in the 1960s and the city was formally incorporated on December 28, 197 ...
. Morhaime is best known as the co-founder and the former
president President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university * President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...
of
Blizzard Entertainment Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Irvine, California. A subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, the company was founded on February 8, 1991, under the name Silicon & Synapse, Inc. by three gradu ...
, a subsidiary of Activision 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 a
Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
family and graduated from Granada Hills High School in 1985. He is also an alumnus of
Triangle Fraternity (Truth Conquers All) , maxim = , colors = Old Rose Gray , symbol = Engineers' transit , flower = White chrysanthemum , flag = , jewel = , publication = ''Triangle Review'' , philanthropy = FIRST , chapters = 38 Active 4 Colonies , members = 1,20 ...
and received his
bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ...
in Electrical Engineering in 1990 from the
University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California S ...
(UCLA). In sixth grade, Morhaime, along with his brother and sister, purchased a video game console called the
Bally Professional Arcade The ''Bally'' ''Astrocade'' (also known as ''Bally Arcade'' or initially as ''Bally ABA-1000'') is a second-generation home video game console and simple computer system designed by a team at Midway, at that time the videogame division of Bally ...
, 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 on hardware than on
software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...
. "I procrastinated a lot," he admitted. Things changed after he got an internship at a San Jose microchip 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 in
Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Coun ...
, 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 create Silicon & Synapse, the company that would be renamed later as Blizzard Entertainment. The initial founders—Morhaime,
Allen Adham Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Irvine, California. A subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, the company was founded on February 8, 1991, under the name Silicon & Synapse, Inc. by three gradu ...
and Frank Pearce—rented a small office in
Irvine, California Irvine () is a master-planned city in South Orange County, California, United States, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Irvine Company started developing the area in the 1960s and the city was formally incorporated on December 28, 197 ...
, where the proximity to other companies was hoped to be advantageous to them. In 1995, Blizzard released ''
Warcraft II ''Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness'' is a fantasy real-time strategy computer game developed by Blizzard Entertainment and released for DOS in 1995 and Mac OS in 1996 by Blizzard's parent, Davidson & Associates. A sequel to '' Warcraft: Orcs & Huma ...
'', 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 of ''
World of Warcraft ''World of Warcraft'' (''WoW'') is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. Set in the ''Warcraft'' fantasy universe, ''World of Warcraft'' takes place within the world of Azeroth ...
'' (''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 that ''WoW'' would 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) ''WoW'' sold 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 Warcraft'' had 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 on ''World 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 the
Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame The D.I.C.E. Awards (formerly the Interactive Achievement Awards) is an award show in the video game industry started in 1998 and commonly referred to in the industry as the "video games Oscar". The awards are arranged by the Academy of Interac ...
. On the same year, Morhaime was honored at the 59th Annual
Technology & Engineering Emmy Award The Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards, or Technology and Engineering Emmys, are one of two sets of Emmy Awards that are presented for outstanding achievement in engineering development in the television industry. The Technology and Enginee ...
s for Blizzard's creation of ''
World of Warcraft ''World of Warcraft'' (''WoW'') is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. Set in the ''Warcraft'' fantasy universe, ''World of Warcraft'' takes place within the world of Azeroth ...
''. Along with
Don Daglow Don Daglow (born circa 1953) is an American video game designer, programmer, and producer. He is best known for being the creator of early games from several different genres, including pioneering simulation game ''Utopia'' for Intellivision in 1 ...
of Stormfront Studios and John Carmack of
id Software id Software LLC () is an American video game developer based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded on February 1, 1991, by four members of the computer company Softdisk: game programmer, programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer T ...
, Morhaime is one of only three designers or producers to accept awards at the Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards and at the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Interactive Achievement Awards. Morhaime received the national
Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award The EY Entrepreneur of the Year Awards previously Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards is an award sponsored by Ernst & Young in recognition of entrepreneurship. Founded in 1986 in Milwaukee as a single award, as of 2016 twenty-five pro ...
in 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 on '' The Guild'', a web series about the lives of a gamers' online experiences with an MMORPG that draws references to ''World of Warcraft''. He is known for his work with the gaming community, but also worked on the 2016 film '' Warcraft: The Beginning''.


Personal life

In 2010, Morhaime married his long-time girlfriend Amy Chen. In 2017, Morhaime bought a mansion in a gated Rancho Mirage community in
Riverside County Riverside County is a county located in the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 2,418,185, making it the fourth-most populous county in California and the 10th-most populous in the Uni ...
,
California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
for $2.25 million. He is a member of
ETC * Etc. or et cetera, a Latin expression meaning "and the other things" or "and the rest". ETC or etc may also refer to: Companies and organizations * ETC (Chilean TV channel), a Chilean cable television channel * ETC (Philippine TV channel), a P ...
, a
metal A metal (from Greek μέταλλον ''métallon'', "mine, quarry, metal") is a material that, when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electricity and heat relatively well. Metals are typicall ...
band formed of and by Blizzard employees, where he plays
bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...
.


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Morhaime, Michael 1967 births Living people Blizzard Entertainment people Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame inductees Place of birth missing (living people) 20th-century American Jews Video game businesspeople 21st-century American Jews