Helldivers 2, regardless of having some latest rising pains, is nonetheless an total triumph for developer Arrowhead Video games. You do not simply get tons of of 1000’s of concurrent gamers a mere smattering of months after launch with out, you understand, being a superb videogame.
Helldivers 2 is a serious success now that its launch is within the rear-view—with an quantity of copies offered bigger than the inhabitants of Sweden and former CEO, now CCO Johan Pilestedt dreaming of the studio changing into subsequent FromSoftware. However issues did not all the time look so brilliant, as revealed in a chat Pilestedt gave at Nordic Recreation 2024 this 12 months.
“We acquired requested if we needed to do a sequel to Helldivers, and we mentioned ‘yeah, I feel that seems like a whole lot of enjoyable, as a result of it’s going to be straightforward’. We already know the sport … may in all probability do it in [three years],” reveals Pilestedt, earlier than clicking to the following slide the place a large ‘WRONG’ stamp layers over his presentation. “Yeah. This was flawed. That is an incorrect assumption.”
Pilestedt proceeds to drop the 500kg bomb that Helldivers 2 took, as a substitute, 7 years, 11 months, and 26 days to create—over twice so long as the meant improvement time.
“How can we take a sport that was purported to be in improvement for 3 years, and virtually find yourself at eight? And the way did we handle to outlive throughout that point?” Pilestedt asks. “Apparently, sport improvement is tough, so they are saying—and the explanation why sport improvement is tough is that it is not a straight line.”
Pilestedt presents a improvement cycle fraught with industry-standard issues, the sort that usually lock studios right into a unending rut of improvement hell: “It’s iterative. You need to change your thoughts. You need to retry issues, and evolve issues, and a whole lot of occasions you strive various things and are available again to the unique design as a result of that was clearly the very best one.”
However there have been additionally different elements, as Pilestedt lays out.
Helldivers 2 skilled fast progress from a studio of “round 10 individuals. In direction of the back-end of the challenge, we have been 16” to a “staff of some 35 people … we have been nonetheless retaining our small staff methods of working.” The issue solely grew with the staff’s measurement, going from 40, to 60, to over 100 builders over the course of the sport’s improvement.
“It creates not solely chaos inside a challenge, however chaos throughout the working situations of the corporate … it turns into a vicious cycle when these items aren’t handled appropriately.” Finally, Pilestedt says the staff’s reluctance to go “company” was an enormous a part of why there was a lot team-scaling jetlag:
“We wanna be a ‘hang around on the terrace and have a beer sort of firm’,” he explains, although he would not suppose these issues are mutually unique—the organisational construction, processes, and correct planning “truly assist and guarantee we will retain that … fortunately, over time, we managed to beat this.”
Lastly, Pilestedt identifies the “pitfall” of “transferring targets … we made a very very nice prototype of the sport, and we agreed along with PlayStation that, you understand what? If we simply doubled the price range, will probably be even higher.” He argues that there have been moments like that the place issues “appeared good, however the correct penalties weren’t considered.
“We had this mentality from being in a small studio the place we principally mentioned sure to any problem as a result of we knew that we may do it. However the issue is that, immediately, when you may’t do it anymore, that begins biting you within the ass.”
All of this, Pilestedt says, triggered the staff to fall behind in some ways in which have been catastrophic by way of assembly deadlines—”we by no means stopped to catch up”—earlier than saying that “grit, camaraderie and compassion” acquired his staff by means of the darkish occasions: Refusing to give up, fostering belief between designers on the staff, and having compassion for his or her gamers.
“That’s the reason why we rise up within the morning—daily we consider these avid gamers which are possibly going by means of a tough time, and after they can play our sport, possibly that provides them solace in a second that will in any other case be onerous.”
