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Helldivers 2 studio CEO Shams Jorjani has revealed one lesson that Arrowhead Game Studios has learned from its experience with its latest hit shooter, and that's to start out with "a small team" when it comes to the pre-production stage of its eventual next game.
At the time of writing, Arrowhead hasn't confirmed that it's working on any brand new games, but that's not stopping fans from being curious about the future. Asked in the official Helldivers Discord server if it's true that Arrowhead has "enough capital to fund their own next game," as well as what lessons the team has learned from Helldivers 2, Jorjani admits, "that’s quite the big question."
He doesn't touch on the funding side of the question, but says Arrowhead has learned "lots" from its most recent hit. "One is that we start pre-production with a small team," he continues. "HD2 started with a big team and that was baaaaad."
Jorjani doesn't give any exact numbers here, so it's not clear what his cut-off point for a small team is. In a talk at GDC earlier this year, Arrowhead senior materials artist Romain Lemaire revealed that "there were 20 people at the beginning of the project," before the number expanded to "105 at release," and then around 130 people as of this March.
As for when the studio's next game will actually happen, well, that's another matter. Asked about potential plans for a Helldivers 3 last month, Jorjani said that "we honestly are focusing on the here and now. HD3 is hopefully many years away."
I mean, there's nothing to say that Arrowhead might not make a completely different game in the meantime, but still, it sounds like the devs are quite satisfied with improving and expanding Helldivers 2 for now.
