GamesThird Person ShooterHelldivers 2New Helldivers 2 CEO says dev-player relationships are more ‘doctor/patient’, reveals that Arrowhead’s taking a stethoscope to your Reddit posts and YouTube rantsWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
GamesThird Person ShooterHelldivers 2New Helldivers 2 CEO says dev-player relationships are more ‘doctor/patient’, reveals that Arrowhead’s taking a stethoscope to your Reddit posts and YouTube rantsWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Arrowhead Games)
Helldivers 2 has simmered down considerably after the stratospheric success of its launch—which started at an all-time peak of over 450,000 players and has since nestled into a cosy 24-hour peak of around 40,000 at the time of writing.
That’s still pretty healthy numbers for a live-service game (and I don’t think anyone expected Helldivers 2 to stay at 400,000 concurrents forever—those kinds of numbers are usually reserved for big MMORPGs, MOBAs, and the most popular shooters) but there have been somePSN,balance, andbug-relateddramas that have certainly contributed to a dip in player count. This has all led to amore long-term strategy—because yeah, Arrowhead Games probably does need toslow down a bit.
As part of these changes, former CEO Johan Pilestedt elected to become thegame’s CCO insteadin order to direct ‘100% of my focus [to] the game and community’. Replacing him is Shams Jorjani, whotook to Twitter yesterdayto share some snapshots from the studio’s new workshops that confirm yes, the team is reading your Reddit threads.
“I asked Pilestedt to host the first of a series of [workshops] at the [Arrowhead Games] office on the topic of ‘Us and Them: building healthy relationships with our players and partners’,” explains Jorjani, wherein the team tries “to unpack learnings since launch.”
Image1of2(Image credit: @ShamsJorjani on Twitter/X.)(Image credit: @ShamsJorjani on Twitter/X.)
Image1of2(Image credit: @ShamsJorjani on Twitter/X.)(Image credit: @ShamsJorjani on Twitter/X.)
Image1of2
(Image credit: @ShamsJorjani on Twitter/X.)(Image credit: @ShamsJorjani on Twitter/X.)
(Image credit: @ShamsJorjani on Twitter/X.)(Image credit: @ShamsJorjani on Twitter/X.)
(Image credit: @ShamsJorjani on Twitter/X.)
(Image credit: @ShamsJorjani on Twitter/X.)
(Image credit: @ShamsJorjani on Twitter/X.)
(Image credit: @ShamsJorjani on Twitter/X.)
(Image credit: @ShamsJorjani on Twitter/X.)
(Image credit: @ShamsJorjani on Twitter/X.)
(Image credit: @ShamsJorjani on Twitter/X.)
(Image credit: @ShamsJorjani on Twitter/X.)
(Image credit: @ShamsJorjani on Twitter/X.)
(Image credit: @ShamsJorjani on Twitter/X.)
“A big takeaway,” Jorjaniwrites, “is that we as developers and players have a bit of a doctor/patient relationship. A patient comes in with knee pain thinking it’s due to a particular ‘thing’. We as doctors know it’s not that ‘thing’. The patient is wrong, but they are also STILL in pain.”
I get what Jorjani’s saying. When it’s a small dedicated group of R&D specialists seeking something out, the Helldivers 2 community has identified issues with laser precision, such assolo mission patrol spawn timesbeing busted. But they have also been completely wrong when the word-of-mouth machine picks up on the wrong cues, such as with certainricochet changes.
In other words—small groups of people who play games can occasionally turn up some really good QA work but, taken as a whole, gaming communities are better at identifying that an issueexists,rather than identifying why it exists, or what reasonable solutions are. To borrow a phrase from1997’s Men in Black: “A person is smart, people are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.”
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The two slides in question show Pilestedt stood in front of suitably-named ‘diagnostic’ explainers, which feature a mixture of tweets, YouTube videos and yes, Reddit threads such asthis oneposted a day ago. The slide in question highlights “TL:DR: shooting a titan’s mouth should be considered critical damage” as a pertinent takeaway. Now, considering Jorjani’s words (and a lack of access to the full presentation) it’s uncertain whether Arrowhead actually agrees with this assessment, but it’s at least using community sentiment to inform its opinions.
It’s definitely a delicate balance to walk. Yes, community feedback can absolutely be a useful thing in a developer’s toolkit—but I don’t know if I’ve ever believed that the customer isalwaysright, especially when said customer is a non-Euclidean swarm of opinionated and anonymous internet strangers that are, often, disproportionately loud (people who are enjoying a game don’t take to forums, after all).Down that route lies madness.
On the other hand, having obvious and reasonable complaints and being met with astone wallis annoying, too. It’s just rocks and hard places no matter where you look, though it’ll be interesting to see how Arrowhead Games tackles the challenge.
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