In Helldivers 2, I’m doing my part

polygon.com:

It was somewhere between my first tour of duty scrapping bots at Malevelon Creek and nuking Termanids on Turing that it occurred to me that the Helldivers’ secret weapon isn’t their mighty fleet or some fancy new weapon: It’s the camaraderie formed with other players when you’re fighting for a shared goal.

The gameplay in Helldivers 2 heavily emphasizes cooperation between players without the need for an official ruleset. Whether you’re completing an objective or just trying to survive, there’s something powerful about fighting for the person next to you, and the Helldivers 2 community has that in spades. While people just generally enjoying the game is a big part of it, the sense of companionship is the result of some clever and deliberate decisions made by developer Arrowhead Game Studios that empower its players to actively help one another.

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The most obvious instance of this is the galaxy map, which shares real-time metrics associated with the “liberation” or defense of a planet. This number goes up with every sequence of missions you complete, which is typically no more than a fraction of a percent, but knowing that your efforts made some small contribution can have a profound psychological impact. And that’s only sweetened by the extrinsic motivation offered by the steady trickle of in-game currency you earn in each mission. This is reinforced with the addition of community goals, which can take place over long periods of time and require players to concentrate their efforts on a singular task for larger rewards, like the successful defense of a certain number of planets. This further emphasizes that in order to succeed, you need to work together.

I’m usually a little on the fence about other players joining me in the game, but Arrowhead made it so beneficial to have other players with you that I’m more inclined to actively seek out or request squadmates. Nothing prevents you from dropping into Helldivers 2 solo (liberty knows I have), and with very