Mintrocket CEO Jaeho Hwang wants Dave the Diver DLC and a Dave cinematic universe

Mintrocket CEO Jaeho Hwang has plans for Dave the Diver DLC that puts characters at the center and even wants a Dave the Diver cinematic universe

Mintrocket/Nexon

Mintrocket CEO Jaeho Hwang has plans for Dave the Diver DLC that puts characters at the center and even wants a Dave the Diver cinematic universe – and with his newfound independence from parent company Nexon, he can make it happen. Hwang made the comments to VGC during Gamescom Asia and said that Nexon’s choice to make Mintrocket an independent division gives the team freedom to focus on projects that interest them instead of having to pitch to Nexon and hope for the best.

Dave the Diver sold 3 million units by the start of 2024, and its success is what prompted Nexon to trust Mintrocket as its own division.

“I want to expand Dave the Diver IP itself,” Hwang said. “I think that’s every director’s dream, since we have a relatable character. But actually, we didn’t go really deep into the personal stories in Dave the Diver, because we wanted to keep the game very casual.”

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In addition to Dave the Diver’s DLC, Hwang wants to eventually make separate games about major characters’ lives before they arrived at Blue Hole and how they ended up meeting each other there. It sounds like an approach similar to one Yacht Club took with Shovel Knight, where the team gradually expanded the world with new stories told from the perspectives of the Shovel Knight’s adversaries, which is probably why Hwang jokingly called his vision the “Dave Cinematic Universe.”

That and the fact that Dave the Diver already crosses into one of Hwang’s other projects.

“Cobra, one of our main characters, he’s from my previous project, Evil Factory," Hwang said. "He was an arms dealer who had his license revoked, and after that, he retired and enjoyed his life, and something happened, and he decided to come into the Blue Hole. So I really want to tell this kind of story in other games."

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Like Yacht Club’s other projects, Hwang wants new Dave the Diver games – if and when they happen – to branch out into other genres, so don’t expect five more versions of the same thing. This is all still in the early planning phases, though. Hwang has an idea how he wants to structure teams for new project – small, with 20-30 people – but no actual development has begun yet.