Helldivers 2 turned out to be one of 2024's surprise hits, partly due to how developer Arrowhead has gently guided an enormous playerbase in the service of Super Earth. Since launch, the game has been under intense community scrutiny and, despite its success, has often found itself at odds with players: Whether that's suffering review bombs or trying to deal with their latest unexpected wheeze.
Part of the whole shebang has been Arrowhead's forward-facing engagement with the Helldivers. CEO Johan Pilestedt isn't afraid to wade-in on controversies and occasionally tease players, the mysterious game master Joel has become a community meme, and community manager Twinbeard, aka Thomas Petersson, has been in the frontlines from the start cajoling and commiserating with the troops.
Petersson's contract with Arrowhead recently ended, and he'll no longer be working on Helldivers 2. We reached out to ask about the experience of managing a community that grew vastly, seemingly overnight, and the challenges of herding Helldivers around the galaxy.
"I joined Arrowhead the week after Helldivers 2 launched," says Petersson. "I’d seen some trailers on HD2 before applying for the role as Community Manager and thought it looked really promising. I also knew of Arrowhead from my prior work in the industry and that they were a solid developer. That being said, I dare say very few expected it to blow up the way it did. Hindsight is always 20/20, but you rarely plan for a global phenomenon."
It's fair to say no-one expected Helldivers 2 to be quite as successful as it was: Even publisher Sony seemed taken aback by the rush of players and enthusiasm. That first week of launch was "crazy, mostly in a good way," says Petersson. "For most people a launch like this is a once in a career experience. February 1st there were 5,000 people on our Discord server. A week later there were 10,000, and ten days later we broke 360,000. A few months later we were close to one million. Every day when the US was waking up, there were more than 100 people joining every minute. The growth, hype and dedication surrounding HD2 has been an amazing thing to be a part of."
The sheer scale was gob-smacking, but Arrowhead already knew how it was going to guide players through the game's overarching Galactic War. Major orders necessitate that the Helldivers converge on certain planets and areas of the solar system though, at a certain point, players began to chafe against the exact strategies being deployed by Super Earth. The greatest example of this was the so-called Martale Gambit, where the Helldivers went off-script to liberate certain planets that would, in theory, cripple enemy supply chains.
"To be perfectly honest, with that level of investment from our players, I wasn’t surprised [with the Martale Gambit] at all," says Petersson. "The over-the-top theme and co-op setting obviously lends itself well to teamwork in more areas than just during missions in-game.
"Nonetheless, watching players in the community coming together as a whole, either to solve problems or when facing challenges, is fascinating and… well, endearing a lot of the time, really. Sure, large groups of fans can become a bit wild at times, but it’s a very genuine feeling sparked out of love and interest, and you can’t fake that. Whenever you spark that level of ingenuity and reach that level of interaction, you should be grateful to be a part of it."
I ask Petersson about these surprises the community throws up, and some of his favourite memories from his time watching over them. "I don’t want this to sound belittling, but the Helldiving community is fairly predictable in the sense that their actions are slightly more emotionally driven than pragmatic, so the outcome is often fairly easy to predict," says Petersson. "Therefore I think that the utter dedication, strength in numbers and conviction is what has and still surprises me. That really speaks to me on a personal level.
"The Helldivers community has managed to resolve major orders that we all thought were impossible internally. They have shown the world (Earth as well as Super Earth) that they are a force to be reckoned with, both when things don’t go as planned and when helping you succeed. Communities can make and break anything they set their minds to, and appreciating and honing that can create a bond that’s incredibly strong."
Certainly my favourite example of this is when the Helldivers were given a choice between liberating a fancy new weapon or saving a hospital for sick children. Do I even need to tell you what happened? No sick child will fall to alien scum while a Helldiver breathes!
Petersson is now looking for a new job in the industry, but says he'll miss "almost everything" about Helldivers 2. And he has a reminder about why it's been such a success: "Helldivers 2 is a really good game, we have to remember that. For all of the initial challenges around launch and mistakes being made along the way, Arrowhead smashed it out of the park here. Their vision and endurance (if I remember this correctly, it took seven years, eleven months and 26 days to make the game) was what set this chain of events in motion, so serious kudos to that and to the support I felt when joining the team."
And his closing remarks are for that remarkable fan base. "Things have moved fast; today, no one bats an eyelid behind their helmet visors seeing amazing artwork, cosplay suits or lore driven clips on Youtube," says Petersson. "but if you take a step back, it’s an impressive thing to behold. The love, respect and appreciation I’ve felt during my tenure here and even more so when leaving, is something I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life."
To all citizens and the Helldivers of Super Earth, this is Twinbeard, signing off. Is it just a game, man?
"I beg to differ," says Petersson. "This may sound like my TL;DR version of the Independence Day speech, but one of the reasons I’ve always loved interacting with people who share a common interest, which has usually been games in my line of work, is that I try to never diminish other people’s views of something. A game can be just as important to someone as virtually anything else in the world, and sharing that is worth a lot."
