Arrowhead Game Studios’ Helldivers 2 has successfully established itself as one of the most popular co-op video games in the world, but the journey was full of setbacks. At one point, Helldivers 2 lost most of its fanbase due to a lack of new content. The studio ignored most of the fans’ demands, and as a result, the game was on the verge of dying. The studio turned things around by prioritising players’ feedback, which proves that players were right all along.
However, this doesn’t mean that Arrowhead will always listen to the community. Every day, many Helldivers 2 players share a bunch of unique missions, Stratagems, weapons, or even enemy ideas on social media, hoping that it would reach the studio, but most of these demands are unrealistic.
Arrowhead CCO Johan Pilestedt explained that developers can’t complete certain gameplay demands
Developing a video game is a challenging process; however, continuing to provide support for a live-service game has become equally difficult for most studios, as gamers now have very high expectations. Even when it comes to a detailed game like Helldivers 2, the developers are often criticized for their decisions, but there is a reason why certain things are not added to the game.
In a recent interview with GamesRadar, Johan Pilestedt, the Chief Creative Officer of Arrowhead Game Studios, talked about players’ unrealistic gameplay demands.
People say, ‘can’t they add this or do that’ – Most of the time, all of the decisions that you make, especially the larger the game gets, have so many consequences that cascade, making something that seems easy really hard, or something that seems really hard to be super simple. It’s unintuitive unless you’ve worked in games to see how they’re created.
Pilestedt even compared it to movies, explaining that it’s easier to get an actor and explain to them what to do, but in video games, developers have “to build the actor from the ground up.” Palworld‘s publishing manager, John Buckley, also chimed in to explain that even the most basic things take months to develop.
The development of Helldivers 2 was far more complex than most popular co-op games
One of the main reasons why Helldivers 2 is so popular is its exciting mechanics and gameplay, but that is also the reason why it took way too long to develop the game. The game is built using Autodesk Stingray, a game engine that was discontinued during the development of the game. There was a lot of pressure since the developers were left with no support.
Helldivers 2 was released for PlayStation 5 and Windows in February 2024, six years after Autodesk Stingray’s official support ended. This was truly a remarkable achievement, as no other studio would go to this length to give players a great co-op experience.
Even today, Arrowhead developers are doing everything to give players what they want, even if it means meeting some unreasonable gameplay demands. Gamers need to cut some slack, because maintaining a game like this is not easy.
This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire
