A few weeks after Helldivers 2 came out, Arrowhead boss Johan Pilestedt introduced the world to Joel, the official "game master" at Arrowhead pulling the strings on Super Earth's galactic war against the Terminids and Automatons. The community instantly embraced his faceless, invisible presence, creating memes and attributing any and all happenings in Helldivers to his great design. Some joke that he's a myth started by Arrowhead to create a common enemy for players, others think Joel is a machine controlling the flow of reinforcements in the galaxy.
Joel has become a symbol of Helldivers 2's innovative, participatory war metagame, and while talking to Pilestedt about Helldivers 2's new surprise update, Omens of Tyranny, we also got a somewhat surprising Joel update.
"Joel is now a team of people working together, and it's always been like that," Pilestedt told PC Gamer. "There's a lot of people that make the world of Helldivers work, and the team has gotten better and better at working together with the community, figuring out what the community is going to enjoy."
We want it to be a good back-and-forth between the game master team on our side and what the community can do.
Johan Pilestedt, Arrowhead CCO
I take "it's always been like that" to mean it was never literally just Joel working on the war, but now the "game master team," as Pilestedt calls it, has expanded in tune with Arrowhead's plans for growing the Helldivers 2's metagame.
"We want the players to be able to have more control over their play experience, and we want it to be a good back-and-forth between the game master team on our side and what the community can do."
The launch of the Democracy Space Station, a dynamic entity on the galaxy map that players can vote to send to planets in need, is a recent example of that plan in action. By donating Req points that, these days, are piling up in players' accounts by the tens of thousands, the community can trigger temporary buffs on planets like free airstrikes and protection against capture.
The arrival of the Illuminates changes things, too. This is now a three-front war, and that means the community will be spreading itself thinner than before. Coordination and agency will be more important than ever, and hopefully Arrowhead can deliver the tools.
"When we started developing Helldivers 2, we wanted to create a true galaxy at war, and that's something we're going to continue working on over the next couple of years."
