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Hello! I’m Mike Hergaarden, founder of M2H and a lifelong multiplayer game enthusiast. I’ve spent almost two decades building games that connect people. From tinkering with browser-based experiments in the mid-2000s to releasing full-fledged PC and console titles, my journey has been one wild ride fueled by a passion for online play. Below, I’ll walk you through that journey – in my own words – sharing how M2H grew from a one-man hobby into the indie studio I run today.
Today, M2H is a solo indie studio – essentially just me, Mike – working with a network of collaborators. I’m currently focused on an upcoming 2D multiplayer RPG project, returning to my roots in co-operative multiplayer gaming.
I started making games back in 2004 as a hobby, while I was doing web design gigs on the side. My first creations were small web-based multiplayer games – think Warrior Fields and Robot Revolutions (both 2004) – which were rudimentary but taught me a ton. In 2005 I created a text-based MMO called Syrnia, a medieval fantasy browser game. To my surprise, out of its 350k+ registrations in over 20+ years, Syrnia attracted a tight-knit community that did more than just grind for XP. Players formed real friendships; multiple couples even met through the game and got married in real life, and we ended up with a memorial page to honor community members who passed away. Seeing players forge genuine bonds through a game I built was incredible – it showed me early on how meaningful multiplayer communities can be.
In 2006, I developed a hacking simulation game called Slave Hack, where players competed to be the best hacker. One day, SlaveHack unexpectedly went viral – it hit the front page of Digg (which was huge at the time) and my server couldn’t handle the traffic. I’ll never forget being literally in the barber’s chair when I got an emergency call from our hosting provider because the influx of users had overloaded the server for nearly a week! It was a chaotic moment that taught me a lot about server infrastructure and preparedness. These early projects might have been held together with digital duct tape, but they cemented my love for creating multiplayer experiences.
By late 2008, after a string of browser game projects, I was experimenting with the Unity game engine. There wasn’t a good place to publish Unity web games back then, so my brother Matt and I launched Wooglie.com in November 2008. Wooglie was a Unity games portal born from our own need to share our Unity projects with the world (this was before app stores made distribution easy). It quickly became a hub for Unity web games, and gave us a platform to showcase our work and even other developers’ games.
In January 2009, I officially (legally) founded M2H as a one-man company. At this point Matt (my younger brother) “unofficially” had been helping me on the side with 3D art for my games. Once M2H was formalized, the two of us began working more closely: I handled the coding and technical side, and Matt contributed artwork and visuals. We were a scrappy two-person team determined to make the games we loved playing.
Our focus in those days was on small, experimental minigames – often multiplayer – which we usually released on Wooglie. One early highlight was a quirky 3D stunt driving game called Crash Drive 3D, which we put up on Wooglie and other platforms. It was a blast to make, and it gained a following for its open-world chaotic fun. Around the same time, we also dabbled in mobile gaming – we developing an iOS game (Bomb Factory in 2009), but weren’t happy with the results on mobile and put the mobile idea on hold for a year. That failure was humbling, but it didn’t stop us; we kept experimenting and learning.
Between 2010 and 2011, while I was wrapping up my university studies, M2H also created and released a few tools on the brand-new Unity Asset Store, sharing some of our know-how with other developers. For my Bachelor’s project I created a prototype 3D multiplayer game – essentially a modernized version of Syrnia but in 3D. My main focus was on the networking side: how to synchronize players in a shared world and keep the experience smooth and reliable. My Master’s thesis in Multimedia (VU Amsterdam), I researched collaborative game development: enabling multiple developers to work together in the Unity editor at the same time, with all changes instantly visible to everyone. In other words, “multiplayer game development” itself – years before tools like Unity Collaborate or Plastic SCM existed. One big project of that era was Cubelands, an online block-building game inspired by Minecraft. I started Cubelands in the summer of 2010 and was fascinated by user-generated content and community features.
Cubelands became popular enough that a German game company, Upjers, took interest. In July 2011 I decided to sell Cubelands to Upjers. It was a tough decision to let my “baby” go, but it validated that the hobby could be a real business plus I was convinced they’d knew better where and how to take the game next. 2011 was also a milestone for me personally: I earned my MSc in Multimedia (at VU Amsterdam) that June, and with my studies finished, I could finally go full-time into development. No more trying to juggle exams and code deployments – I was now 100% focused on making games.
Technically, those years were a crash course in scaling online games. I often built custom, self-hosted server solutions to keep our games running smoothly – back then, “the cloud” wasn’t as accessible, so we literally ran our own servers (at the beginning, a game server was humming away in our parents’ attic, standing on toilet paper rolls as noise supression). I also got involved with improving Unity’s networking capabilities. Unity’s built-in multiplayer was limited, so I collaborated with the folks at Exit Games to co-create Photon Unity Networking (PUN) – a networking plugin for Unity that many developers still use today . I’m not one to brag, but I’m proud that I helped found PUN in collaboration with Exit Games, because it made life easier for a lot of indie devs wanting to go multiplayer. All these technical challenges – whether it was keeping a server alive under a Digg tsunami or writing netcode for real-time physics – reinforced my belief that innovative tech and multiplayer design have to go hand-in-hand.
By 2012, M2H had a few more hits under its belt. We revisited Crash Drive 3D, bringing it to iOS and eventually Android as mobile platforms took off . The game’s blend of driving mayhem and multiplayer fun struck a chord – by late 2012 we saw over 5 million downloads on mobile. We also partnered with Spil Games to get Crash Drive 3D running in web browsers, which expanded its reach even further. To top off 2012, we released Highway Rally, another fast-paced racing title, in December of that year. It felt like we finally hit a formula that worked: pick a genre we enjoy, add multiplayer chaos, and keep the tech solid.
2013 turned out to be a transformative year. First, M2H’s business structure evolved – my brother and I formed a formal partnership (in Dutch terms, a “maatschap”) that year, solidifying Matt’s role as co-owner . More importantly, 2013 is when we embarked on what would become one of our most famous projects: a realistic World War I shooter called Verdun. I had met developer Jos Hoebe during my first university days, and together we decided to recreate the gritty trench warfare of WW1 in a game . We formed a partnership with Jos, combining his historical detail and our multiplayer know-how. Verdun started as a passion project and in mid-2013 we took a leap by putting an early version on Steam Greenlight. To our amazement, Verdun became the first-ever Dutch game approved via Steam Greenlight in June 2013 , which was a huge vote of confidence from the community.
On the side, we didn’t abandon our lighter titles – in fact, around that same time we were developing Crash Drive 2, the sequel to our stunt racer. We even ran a public beta for Crash Drive 2 in late 2013. To juggle both projects, we outsourced some development of Crash Drive 2 to another indie team (RageSquid) for a while, since Verdun was our top priority. It all paid off: Verdun fully released on Steam in April 2015 , and Crash Drive 2 followed with its own PC/Steam release in May 2015 . Seeing Verdun go from a tiny prototype to a globally played game was surreal. Its success proved that a small independent team could handle a “serious” FPS rooted in history – and handle the backend for 32-player matches, which I’m especially proud of from a tech standpoint.
Amidst the serious WW1 development, we also allowed ourselves some fun side projects. In late 2014, during a Global Game Jam I prototyped a wacky party game that eventually became Marooners. Sometimes you need a break from gritty realism, and Marooners was our outlet for something more colorful and chaotic (imagine a party game where the mini-games keep switching on the fly). We would later refine and release Marooners, but at this stage it was our experimental playground while Verdun was in the trenches of production.
Post-Verdun, M2H continued to expand into new genres and platforms. We officially launched Marooners in early 2016, starting in Steam Early Access . It was a refreshing change of pace – a family-friendly party game with local and online play – and it helped us broaden our audience beyond the hardcore shooter fans. 2016 was also when M2H transitioned from a partnership into a private limited company (a BV) in the Netherlands . We were growing up as a business, but we kept that indie spirit at heart.
Meanwhile, the unexpected success of Verdun paved the way for an entire WW1 Game Series. Together with Jos, we followed Verdun with a standalone expansion/sequel, Tannenberg, which explored the Eastern Front of WW1. Tannenberg first released on PC in 2017 , bringing larger open maps and a different style of warfare to the series. Eventually (by early 2019) Tannenberg left early access and we even brought it to consoles a bit later, letting console players experience the WW1 battles. It was clear we’d tapped into an underserved niche – gamers were really interested in the First World War setting, and our dedication to authenticity was resonating.
Of course, we didn’t forget our love for over-the-top driving games during this time. Building on the momentum of Crash Drive 2, we started working on Crash Drive 3. Our goal was to make it bigger, crazier, and available on every platform imaginable. It took a few years of on-and-off development, but by July 2021 Crash Drive 3 was ready to launch, complete with cross-play multiplayer across PC, consoles, and even mobile. Watching players drive monster trucks, tanks, and other ridiculous vehicles in giant open-world playgrounds – and all seamlessly playing together online – was a proud moment. The Crash Drive series had come a long way from its humble webgame origins.
Back on the serious side, our WW1 series culminated in a third title, Isonzo, which shifted the front to the mountains of Italy. We started development of Isonzo around 2019, aiming to push the realism and scope even further. Isonzo was a major undertaking for our team, and it all came together when we launched the game in September 2022 (coinciding with the real-life anniversary of WW1’s Italian Front). The trilogy of Verdun, Tannenberg, and Isonzo felt like the capstone of nearly a decade of work in the WW1 space. By this time, the three games combined had sold over 2 million copies, far exceeding anything Jos, Matt and I dreamed of when we first started.
As Isonzo was nearing completion, we faced a pivotal moment for M2H. In late 2022, we decided to sell our majority stake in the WW1 Game Series to Focus Entertainment, a large publisher. This was a big deal for us: it meant the Verdun/Tannenberg/Isonzo franchise would get the support of a major publisher to continue growing, while we at M2H could return our focus to fresh projects. We knew the series was in good hands with our partner Jos Hoebe and the Focus team taking the lead, now working under the name “BlackMill games”. The timing was perfect – Isonzo had just launched and garnered a great response, and we were itching for new challenges. In a press release I even mentioned how excited I was for this new phase: both seeing WW1 games continue under new leadership and jumping into our next big project.
After an amazing 17-year run of making games together, my brother Matt left M2H in 2023 to pursue his own path. I’m deeply grateful for his contributions and all the adventures we shared. I’m continuing M2H solo exactly how I started it – now backed by much more experience and a fantastic network of collaborators whenever more hands are needed.
So, what’s next? In a way, I’m back to where I started. I’m currently working on a brand-new multiplayer project – a online game that harkens back to the kind of game I’ve wanted to make for almost 20 years . In fact, I’ve been talking about making a certain multiplayer RPG since the early 2000s, and now I finally have the chance to do it. It’s an ambitious 2D fantasy MORPG (multiplayer online RPG) with a co-op focus, and I’m pouring all those years of experience into it.
Developing this new title as essentially a solo project (with a few talented collaborators) feels like coming full circle. I’m back to a smaller-scale, hands-on development style – prototyping gameplay during the day and configuring servers at night, much like the old times. Except now, instead of coding in a bedroom between college classes, I’m doing it with the backing of two decades of industry experience and a community of players who have followed our games over the years. It’s equal parts nostalgic and exhilarating.
Through all these phases – from text-based adventures and browser games, to mobile hits, to console shooters, and now back to indie passion projects – one thing has stayed constant: I love multiplayer games. I love making them, playing them, and seeing players enjoy them. Whether it’s watching two people fall in love via an MMO I created, or watching 64 strangers coordinate in Verdun’s trenches, or even just hearing laughter during a round of Marooners – those moments make all the hard work worth it.
M2H today remains independent, self-funded, and dedicated to innovation in multiplayer gaming. I assemble teams as needed, stay agile, and focus on creating experiences that bring people together. Here’s to many more years of crafting games that connect players worldwide, and to always pushing the boundaries of what small passionate developers can do in the multiplayer space.
Thank you for reading my story – and for being part of it, if you’ve ever played (or even just heard of) one of our games. I’m excited for the next chapter, and I hope to see you online!