It seems that every new month, a completely unexpected game with little to no marketing becomes ridiculously popular as a general rule of thumb. It was Palwrold in January and then Helldivers 2 won the lottery in February. With the way video game marketing has changed in recent years, game developers should rely less and less on traditional advertisements and have to hope that the right clips, the right memes, and the right stream at the right time emerge and make their game go viral. Miraculously for Arrowhead Studios, all of those things happened and now Helldivers 2 is already one of the inspiring success stories of the video game industry in 2024.
Why Is Helldivers 2 So Popular?
Before we answer that question, we need to understand that there is no exact science as to why things become wildly popular. If there was, you could have predicted and engineered it, but as soon as you find a pattern, the pattern changes, because it refuses to lend itself to predictability. There are too many variables at work for something to become viral, while something equally as good and interesting can fail to do so. Sometimes, it’s all about luck.
Having said that, we can recognize some of the qualities that Helldivers 2 has that made it a strong candidate to become the next big game of 2024:
A Catchy Premise
For a game to become viral, it needs to have a catchy premise. What we mean by that is that it needs to sound cool or interesting in a one-sentence description. All of the games that became unexpectedly viral in the past few years have that quality:
- Among Us: It’s Mafia (The party game) in a spaceship
- Fall Guys: A game show with funny bean people, who may or may not be metaphors for sperms
- Palworld: Pokemon… with guns
Now what’s the catchy premise of Helldivers 2? It’s Starship Troopers as a coop game. Starship Troopers is a popular satirical science fiction movie about a Fascistic future earth that fights against giant insectoid aliens. This movie made fun of Fascism by making this society of humans way too obsessed with militarism and righteousness at the same time. Helldivers 2 does the same thing. It’s about a “managed democracy” (AKA a dictatorship with a democratic mask) called “Super Earth” which is sending shock troopers called “Helldivers” to reclaim lost colonies from aliens. The military of the Super Earth is a satire of the American military, with the whole “spreading democracy” meme. This satirical tone helped the game’s meme marketing and inspired a renewed interest in Starship Troopers. This premise worked, because the American military and its “world police” policy have been an acceptable target of ridicule and satire for the past 2 decades.
Engaging and Dynamic Gameplay Thanks to Stratagems
Helldivers 2 has a certain gimmick that has helped it become a very “clip-worthy” game and that is “stratagems”. Stratagems are “a wide variety of powerful ordnance and war materiel that Helldivers are able to call down from their Super Destroyers during missions”. These stratagems create a highly dynamic game-play that sometimes results in funny, epic, and entertaining interactions.
Since friendly fire is always on in the game, players can really mess up their teammates by using a stratagem at the wrong time, like carpet bombing a point in the map in which a teammate is walking or calling in a supply drop that lands directly on a teammate’s head.
Apart from creating memorable moments, these stratagems add strategic depth to the game and elevate it beyond a mindless shooter. There are many clips available in which players manage to turn a dire situation around thanks to using stratagems wisely. If the stratagems involve a huge explosion, they usually result in a clip-worthy moment, which has contributed to the game becoming viral.
No Greedy Policies; All About Fun
Gamers are becoming sick and tired of the corporate greed of game publishers. Just recently, Dragon Dogma 2 had a huge hype surrounding it before release and it was expected to become a huge viral hit (like Helldivers 2) thanks to its impressive free character customization demo which was released before the game. But after the game was released, the ridiculous microtransactions that accompanied the game (like being able to buy fast travel with real money) completely killed the momentum, and the game’s initial reception was soured by review bombing and complaints (the most memorable Steam user review being: “Capcom, you can buy a “good review DLC” for 1.99$”).
It is a reflection of the sad state the game industry is in that NOT implementing greedy microtransactions and just focusing on the player’s fun has become a selling point, but that’s the case with Helldivers 2. The game is not bogged down by microtransactions and it has a very generous Battle Pass design that puts Battle Passes in other games to shame. First, the battle pass in this game does not disappear after you obtain it. The time limit that most Battle Passes have is a shady tactic that exploits people’s FOMO. Second, the battle passes – even paid ones – can be obtained for free by playing the game. That means after you buy the game, you get the game and all the content that matters for good. This, combined with the game’s 40$ price tag, which is much less than the average price for games nowadays, has turned Helldivers 2 into a fan favorite.
Does Helldivers 2 Have a Story?
Surprisingly, that is not an easy question to answer, because it depends on how you define “having a story”.
As we mentioned earlier, Helldivers 2 definitely has a context in which the events take place. You are part of the Super Earth (Futuristic Fascistic United Earth) and you are fighting against huge alien bugs. I guess you can call that a story, right? There is no single-player campaign; there are no named characters and cut-scenes (apart from a very hilarious one at the beginning, which is in-universe propaganda) But the game’s story is bigger than that.
See, Helldivers 2 has a community-driven dynamic persistent storytelling that shapes by the passage of time and player actions. Every now and then, Arrowhead Studios introduces a new threat in the game world and the collective performance of players can have an effect on what happens in the future.
For example, as of now, there are 2 factions you can fight against in Helldivers 2: Terminids (the infamous bugs) and Automatons (mindless robots). Every 2 weeks, on the galaxy map (from which you choose missions), a new Major Order is made available. This Major Order is a community-wide goal and all of the players can participate in it. It usually includes liberating a planet, defending an occupied plant from invaders or saving people and personnel from invaded territories.
The developers track the performance of players in Major Orders and provide a success/failure ratio. So in a way, this collective effort IS Helldivers 2’s real story. Everytime you partake in one of these missions, you feel like you are contributing to a collective effort much bigger than yourself and your success or failure on a small scale can turn the tides on a much bigger one, just like real war.
It has been said that in the future, more enemies and factions can be introduced in the game world. So we have to wait and see how Helldivers 2’s world develops. But there’s no doubt that Helldivers 2 has a unique approach to persistent storytelling and worldbuilding, the likes of which has rarely been seen in video games (an example that comes to mind is Destiny 2).
Is Helldivers 2 Isometric?
The reason this question has been asked is that Helldivers 1, the much more obscure predecessor to Helldivers 2, was an Isometric game. But this is not the case with Helldivers 2. This sequel is a full-fledged over-the-shoulder third person shooter (with some first-person bits). The game’s impressive graphics are almost unrecognizable from its predecessor.
However, there’s a good reason why Helldivers “2” is a sequel and not just a completely new game. Even though appearance-wise, these games look nothing like each other, they have a lot of thematic and structural similarities. The satirical tone, the mission-based structure, the co-op centered game-play, the enemies, the stratagems, etc. were all there in the original.
Judging by how less popular Helldivers 1 was compared to its sequel, it looks like turning the franchise into a 3rd person shooter was the lightning in the bottle that it needed.
Conclusion
Helldivers 2 is on a roll and it seems like it’s not going to stop anytime soon. While it’s unlikely that the “700,000 concurrent players” record will stay the norm, Helldivers 2 is going to have a dedicated fanbase for years to come. Arrowhead Games made a lot of right decisions with this game and it ultimately paid off for them. Considering the game’s persistent structure, it looks like the sooner you join Helldivers 2, the better. 7 years down the line, boasting about being a part of the Great Automaton War of 2024 can be something to be proud of in the community.
