Helldivers 2 continues to stand tall as an example of a live service multiplayer title generally doing right by its players, thanks in part to some of the decisions steered by Arrowhead Game Studios CEO Shams Jorjani, who spoke about the company’s trials and triumphs as well as some opinions on what other executives are doing wrong in an interview with The Game Business.
Jorjani goes over some of the shooter’s initial history and how the studio navigated an astonishing surge of success that saw the servers buckle, admitting that keeping true to studio values about “a game for everyone is a game for no one” became much harder when H2 exploded on to the scene.
“[W]e did not make Helldivers for six million Call of Duty players. We absolutely didn’t. But six million Call of Duty players bought our game. And they are interested in different things compared to, say, the audience that comes from Escape From Tarkov or Arma, which were some of our more influential games. […] We were playing like in Division Three and now we’re in Champions League.”
This in turn leads into what Jorjani referred to as “the summer of pain,” which readers will recall included a furious push back against a wide assortment of nerfs and rage incited by a PSN account requirement that was later walked back. On the subject of that latter point, Jorjani is quick to call Sony an important partner, saying in part that “Helldivers wouldn’t exist if PlayStation was not so focused on creating cool stuff for players.”
Sprinkled throughout the interview are Jorjani’s thoughts on the hyperactive growth and subsequent contraction of the games industry, which saw thousands lose their jobs while “business leaders who have taken stupid risks” felt no repercussions.
“A lot of people at the top were making very unsound business decisions, and there’s very little accountability on their part. Who among these executives is stepping down? Or slashing their salaries?
“What’s happening is that regular developers, are paying the cost of that. That’s a terrible way to run our industry. Just because you can hire and triple in size in six months, doesn’t mean you should. […] I’m not saying don’t grow, but do it in a way where you don’t have to then let go of one third of the company because you made stupid decisions.”
