Perhaps you haven’t played Helldivers 2 yet. Perhaps your traitorous non-playing needs to be dealt with by the council of Super Earth. Or … maybe you have reasoned that Helldivers 2 is out of your reach because you don’t play games on a PlayStation 5. Well, we can fix all of that for you today. Resolve your traitorous thoughts and be on the right side of democracy and freedom. How? If you have a PlayStation, just buy the game! If you do not have a PS5, then it’s time to play the game on your Windows-based PC via Steam!
For those of you who are wanting to play with keyboard and mouse, there are functions and control options through Steam for PC play. Steam does, however, also allow use of your Bluetooth-compatible gaming controller. For instance, I use Xbox Series 2 Elite controller and it works great.
I am an Xbox player, and I was waiting for the game to have its crossover moment so that I could play it on my platform of choice, but as of yet, that has not happened. So, I did the next best thing. I bought a new Windows laptop with the sole purpose of gaming. I downloaded Steam and I bought Helldivers 2. The rest is a story verging on addiction due to the number of hours I have played this game. It’s fun, it’s action packed, and it will scare the ever living bejesus out of you every now and then.
So in celebration of the one-year anniversary of this award-winning game and providing some much needed LIBER-TEA to the enemies of Super Earth, I sat down with Katherine Baskin of Arrowhead Game Studios to talk about the game. Katherine is the Community Manager for Arrowhead and a devout fan of the game. A more in-depth video interview of Katherine is available here on my personal channel.
Helldivers 2 had a large resurgence of both new and existing players; what do you attribute the continuing success of the game to?
We hooked a lot of folks again with the Illuminate arrival. Everything about that moment was so well-planned and so carefully structured. It was beautiful to see our players respond to it so warmly. And new players as well.
I think we have an incredibly compelling core gameplay loop, too, which makes it easy to drop back in and play. I’m also a huge fan of the Galactic War and Game Master mechanics, and I think we’re doing really interesting things with that metagame feature that brings players back.
One of the things I hear most in the game channels while playing the game is how much the players appreciate that “the devs actually listened to us”. How important is player feedback in today’s gaming climate?
In terms of live service, it’s everything. Naturally, we have a vision for how we want Helldivers 2 to be, but in order to keep players locked in, we have to listen to them. And there’s never been any question about that. Arrowhead is a community-focused studio.
I spend pretty much my whole day stuck in with players, absorbing their feedback, their feelings, their anger, their joy. It’s a lot of feedback to process because we have so many players and such an active community, but their feedback means everything to us. To me.
Other franchises like Fortnite and Destiny have begun to integrate other fandoms like Star Wars and Marvel into their gameplay and armor sets to keep their audiences interested. It would appear that Arrowhead does not have to use that method. What’s different in the way that your studio approaches player retention?
Well, we did just launch our very first collaboration, which was the Killzone collab we did with our friends at Guerrilla. We’d like to do more like this in the future, but I don’t think Helldivers 2 is going to do a Fortnite kind of thing. We’re very particular about preserving the look and feel of Helldivers, so each collaboration we do has to feel at home in our universe. Killzone was such a natural step: we’ve got a lot of fans of Killzone in the studio, including yours truly, so naturally the look has already sort of influenced us.
A majority of players and content creators are happy with the current direction of the game and the recent updates provided. But there is also a large number who are wanting Malevelon Creek to come back as a playable world. What’s our likelihood of that happening?
Anything can happen. But it’s also important to shout out that players want moments more than specific planets. What made the Creek so special was that it was players’ first major push into the bot front, which is a faction that is very different from bugs, really different to play. I think the Creek became its own moment because players were sort of thrown into the action together and some real bonds were forged, and our players are always hunting for the next opportunity to recapture that feeling of stepping out into the unknown with some good friends in tow.
We’re really doing our best to try and give them those opportunities, too, with these bigger story moments unfolding on the map that they can memorialize and look back on together, like Meridia and most recently Angel’s Venture. And the Menkent Line. And, of course, Operation Trolley Problem–our literal finest moment.
That’s a community named event, by the way. We didn’t have a name for it, it was just Vernen Wells and Super Citizen Anne’s and Save the Children, etc. I think the Helldivers wiki folks coined Operation Trolley Problem, but I’m not sure. Either way, that’s just another beautiful bit of evidence for how our community seizes these moments and really owns them. Feels like they’re in this with us.
There is a large number of players, Sony PlayStation players included, who are hoping for a crossover to Xbox. How likely is that to happen? Or is this likely to remain a Sony and Steam exclusive?
Unfortunately, that’s a question that has to be answered by folks that are above my pay grade. But I can say this, we have definitely seen players on both the Sony and the Xbox side talk about their desire for it to happen.
A big thank you to both Katherine and the fine folks at Arrowhead Game Studios for their help and participation in this article.
Thinking of fighting for liberty and the preservation of Super Earth? There is a rich and thriving community that is playing this game at all hours, all around the globe, so there is always someone to play with. Numbers show that the community is growing, and new players join the ranks of Helldivers every day on both PlayStation and Steam, all supported by a game studio who truly seem to “get it”.
So, grab your controller, or your keyboard, as the case may be, and join our ranks! Become a HELLDIVER!
