Arrowhead Game Studios, maker of last year's gargantuan shooter Helldivers 2, takes inspiration from fellow heavyweight developer FromSoftware in one crucial way: they don't mind turning some players off.
That's according to Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani, who tells the Game Business Podcast that the company's unofficial slogan is "'a game for everyone is a game for no one.'"
What does that mean in terms of production? "We try to stick to our design guns and design what we think makes sense for us rather than try to go for the widest audience possible," Jorjani explains. "That doesn't mean that our hope and intent isn't that the game will resonate with a very wide audience, but kind of like how FromSoftware does it as well. They don't compromise, they go for the connoisseurs, but a lot of people can be attracted to that."
You can see that thinking pop up in Helldivers 2 in all sorts of ways - friendly fire that leads to hilarious, if sometimes annoying deaths, or the massive enemy types that force you into cooperation. Helldivers 2 clearly chases a very specific type of experience, and that's not too dissimilar to the way FromSoftware makes its games, hair-pulling quirks included, whether that's Dark Souls or Elden Ring. And, as Jorjani points out, that philosophy can also lead to massive hits.
"One of my mandates as a CEO is to be a force of good for the industry, I think if we can inspire a few more studios to stick to their guns and show that giving more power to the creators and believing their vision can actually go all the way, I think, is a strong thing rather than going the opposite direction," Jorjani concludes.
