Summary
I’m largely uninterested inlive-service games. The vast majority are very intentionally designed to make you spend as much money as possible, with the gameplay and story crafted to keep players coming back andpouring hundreds or even thousands of hoursinto a single game over the years. Very often, studios that make live-service games are gearing for profit, and quality and ethics fall to the wayside in service of the bottom line. It’s not a good model for creating great games.
But I fell for Helldivers 2 hard. My colleagues and I have written comprehensively about why it stands out in the genre, for reasons likeits very reasonable price,subversion of shooter tropes,surprisingly non-toxic culture,lack of grinding,non-predatory battle passes,its hilarious gameplay, andits excellent storytelling despite its lack of a campaign. It’s not a perfect game by any means, but it keeps players hooked with an organically developing story without ever punishing them for taking time off.
Helldivers 2 Isn’t Like Other Live-Service Games
I’ve always wondered why Helldivers 2 feelssodifferent from every other game in the same space. Monetisation takes a backseat, a huge feat for a game in a genre that is being pushed hard on players because of its monetisation potential. While companies like Blizzard are selling cosmetics for ridiculous prices, Helldivers 2 is ardently against pay-to-win mechanics and makes it easy for players who play often to get enough in-game currency to buy Warbonds through gameplay alone. Not to mention that previous Warbonds stick around, so if you take a few weeks off, you don’t miss out. It isn’t a lifestyle game like so many others are.
Perhaps most importantly, it also doesn’t use seasons, a departure from most games in the genre. Most games release huge seasons that incentivise players to come back to the game, re-hooking players and increasing the potential of squeezing more money out of them.Destiny 2is an obvious example of a live-service game that packs narrative arcs into expansionsandseasons, telling its story over years of updates that are so easy to miss out on.
Live-Service Means A Live D&D Campaign
Helldivers 2 doesn’t do this. Instead, its story is told every day, incorporating player actions and community memes into its narrative. Speaking toInverse, former lead writer Russ Nickel says that the game is heavily influenced by his history as aDungeons & Dragonsdungeon master, allowing him to improvise and change plans according to player behaviour. Helldivers 2 can change and adapt so quickly because it doesn’t operate like typical seasonal live-service games.
Perhaps that’s because when live-service games are developed, game designers have to fit monetisation in as effectively as possible. We’ve been seeing a marked, persistent rise in live-service games in the last few years, with publishers trying to capitalise on the genre’s popularity to maximise profit. That’s how we saw immersive sim developer Arkane Austin end up creating Redfall, an always-online co-op shooter with live-service elements – Zenimax, Bethesda’s parent company, was pressuring studios to make more live-service games. Like I said earlier, trying to shoehorn live-service into a game can make it much worse.
Arkane Austin has since been shut down by Xbox, alongside other studios under the Bethesda umbrella.
But this wasn’t the case with Helldivers 2. It wasn’t the solution to the question, “What would a cool live service game look like?” In fact, it wasn’t even decided it would be a live-service game until halfway through development. Instead, Nickel says that Helldivers 2 is what it is now because that form was the best fit for the narrative. “This feels like what live-service was born to do,” he says. “For a while, Arrowhead didn’t know if the sequel was going to be a live-service title. But as we talked about it more, it was clear that this would make for such a cool live-service experience, one where the story can change constantly so it really does feel alive.”
It turns out I don’t hate live-service games at all, I just hate when games are live-service games when they don’t have to be. Helldivers 2 is the perfect example of form following function, one of the rare games that organically became a live-service because it was the coolest way to do what it wanted to do. The monetisation wasn’t built into the concept, and that’s why it succeeds where other live-services have failed over and over again.
Helldivers 2
Helldivers 2 is the sequel to the third-person shooter from Arrowhead Game Studios. This time out, the Helldivers are deep in the Galactic War, and it’s up to you to bring Managed Democracy to the masses.
