Helldivers 2 revolutionizes service game communication – News

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After polite indifference to each presentation during many State of Play, Helldivers 2 finally took the world by surprise, including the Swedish studio. The tumultuous launch period and the server stability problems and repeated crashes did not get the better of him or the democratic fervor of his players. Thanks to this dazzling success, the studio will even have escaped the heated debate on dispensable microtransactions for objects that can otherwise be found in the game. A chance that Dragon's Dogma 2 will not have had. A similar situation, totally different treatment, which leads us to reflect on the already cult status of the gameArrowhead and its fascination.

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Helldivers 2 on a crusade against traditionalism

As a game service, Helldiverse 2 has one main objective that could not be clearer: the retention of its community. The cornerstone of any game of the genre, it's about making the player want to come back regularly and hope that they spend a few extra dollars in addition to the base game to afford new weapons and other things. joys. We are only breaking open doors here, microtransactions and battle passes having already found their way into multiplayer games for a long time as an addictive mechanic. Beyond these economic structures that we no longer present, Helldiverse 2 stands out through an unusual narration of its new features.

While season systems are well anchored in most game services with a clear and precise calendar of planned new content presented with great fanfare by trailers, advertising campaigns and large patch notes, Arrowhead makes the choice… to do nothing and to rely entirely on its scriptwriting and the mobilization of its community. The arrival of the new war bonds in mid-March, for example, could have served as a skeleton for a system of seasons, which commonly coincides in service games with a new battle pass, but the Swedish studio seems to want to break these forbidding structures. War Bonds may well be Battle Pass in fact, with its gradual rewards requiring you to collect resources, the choice not to give them a limited duration as Halo Infinite did and the fact that communication highlights of Helldiverse 2 do not revolve around them make them seem much more anecdotal to us than the Battle Pass of Fortnite or Apex Legends could be.

Surprise and virality

Rather than announcing its plans, Arrowhead is adopting an unusual tactic relying on additions without any upstream communication and solid word of mouth between players coupled with virality on social networks. The first example of this strategy was observed with the arrival of mechas (exoskeletons, to be precise) a few weeks ago. First dropped in a few random games and widely relayed by players on social networks, the thing ended in apotheosis with a mission to liberate a planet to definitively unlock the big robots for all players.

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At the heart of this strategy is Joel, the studio's mysterious game master in charge of constantly offering activities to players, but above all of scripting the whole thing, already has a cult status within the community, like a faceless ambassador. Where Letmesoloher willingly or unwillingly became a community icon upon the release of Elden Ring by helping players beat Malenia, he remained above all a player. Since Joel is part of the studio, his status is very different and we quickly see this with the latest novelty launched by Arrowhead. For the addition of an armored vehicle, it was once again on the virality of social networks that the studio relied. The clip of Joel arriving in the game of ordinary players to make the famous vehicle appear before disconnecting to say that he had to return to work, will be worth all the official announcements in the world in terms of virality. If some doubt the fact that it is really the mysterious Joel, that does not prevent the extract from being profitable for the studio.

A plan for the future?

With Helldiverse 2, even things as innocuous as a planet with fire tornadoes have viral potential. The addition of new enemies is also done without announcement and Arrowhead has fun with the incorporation of flying insects by responding to players who have encountered them that they are making anti-Super Earth propaganda, always assigning them a storyline and meta. The studio will let its community have fun for a few days with this fake propaganda campaign, before communicating officially through a fake newsletter. There remains an unanswered question: for how long can Arrowhead continue to apply this communication strategy?

Any player with several GaaS on the clock with more than a hundred hours on each of them will be under the spell of this atypical communication which leaves room for surprise in a sector that has become very monotonous in its structures and its communication. And if the casual player won't experience these community moments outside of the game, it will have no impact on their experience. How long will Arrowhead be able to rely on its community and its ability to viralize its updates? What was an innovative way of interacting in the world of games services would become a real communication challenge, which could even lead the studio to return to a more classic model, and therefore by definition more boring, at the risk of disappointing the most fervent defenders of democracy. A quick tour of SteamDB is enough to see that the community is still full of vitality and that this question is not likely to arise on Arrowhead's side for a good while.

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