Helldivers 2 Players' Joint Action Delights Former Dev. 'We Trained Them to Fight Together. And Then They Fought Together'
„Democratic” action by the Helldivers 2 community in response to Sony's controversial decision clearly impressed the game's former screenwriter.
No one liked the confusion surrounding Helldivers 2 and Sony. The "democratic" response and the triumph of the community garnered the approval of many people. This includes the former lead writer of Helldivers 2, who is impressed by players' reactions to the game's blocking in many countries.
However, Russ Nickel didn't only focus on this situation in his conversation with Thron Dowd from Inverse. The interview mainly touched on the appeal of the story setting of the Helldivers series, with a democratic and absolutely non-fascist or dystopian Super Earth.
The dev talked about his inspirations (which, it turns out, include not only Starship Troopers, RoboCop, and the works of Brandon Sanderson, but also "real life"). Nickel also expressed his doubts about the future of narratives written by AI. In his opinion, artificial intelligence performs well in this task, but only at the "surface level."
"Paper" Helldivers 2
However, the former lead writer of Helldivers 2 couldn't help but mention what makes the game a true phenomenon: a community actively playing the role of defenders of Democracy. This isn't uncommon on its own - gamers have been fond of such activities for a long time, as anyone immersed in any video game-centered "fandom" can probably confirm.
However, few fan communities do it as actively as HD2 fans. Partly, it's because of the devs who themselves joined in the fun. Johan Pilestedt and other employees of Arrowhead Game Studios used propaganda and/or humor to encourage players to engage more in this "roleplay" art.
Moreover, Nickel repeated that the inspiration for Arrowhead Game Studios was paper RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons. Hence the presence of the Game Master, but also the involvement of players in the development of the narrative.
Trained in Democracy
Nickel attributes the success of the campaign to this very thing, which was organized by players against the requirement to have a PlayStation Network account from May 6th. The response was so great that Sony ultimately backed out of this decision.
As Nickel put it, the developers of Helldivers 2 first "trained" Super Earth soldiers to cooperate in the game, and then fans stood up for something real - other players.
Nickel is by no means the first to point out the power of the Helldivers community. Johan Pilestedt and two community managers from Arrowhead Game Studios have already shown their appreciation for the fans. One of them, in fact, paid for supporting the players with the loss of his job.
Furthermore, the players themselves didn't miss the irony of the situation. Many of them pointed out that first Sony (or rather the Arrowhead studio) taught them to work together in Helldivers 2 to defend Democracy. Then they expected that fans wouldn't unite in the fight against the "tyranny of Sony."
It should be added that Helldivers 2 is still unavailable in countries where there is no access to PSN. At the moment, Arrowhead is in talks with Sony and Valve about this.
