Arrowhead’s CCO (formerly CEO—and currently on a sabbatical from the game entire) Johan Pilestedt gave a heartfelt speech to the Helldivers 2 subreddit, recently, thanking them for their ongoing support and welcoming Xbox divers into the fold.
As spotted by our friends over at GamesRadar+, however, he also said that Helldivers 2 isn’t the entire future for the studio—in fact, he might be interested in taking Magicka, another similarly friendly-fire filled co-op series where you trade the rifle for a staff, for a whirl. But not without some trepidation.
“I wish I could make it at some point… but Magicka scares me….” Pilestedt writes, “it was made by the founders group in a time where we basically lived together… and all the jokes are derived thereof.”
That’s interesting to hear, but not entirely surprising. In a speech Pilestedt gave at Nordic Game 2024, he identified the studio’s ballooning developer headcount as one of the reasons why Helldivers 2 took almost eight years (rather than the intended three) to create.
He noted that “we were still retaining our small team ways of working,” which he said created “not only chaos within a project, but chaos within the working conditions of the company … it becomes a vicious cycle when these things are not dealt with appropriately.”
Having endured the growing pains of a small studio to one with over 100 employees—still humble compared to most big-budget titans, but by no means easy to manage—his nervousness makes total sense. The Arrowhead that made Helldivers 2 simply isn’t the same Arrowhead that made Magicka.
Still, he notes, “I would like to do it at some point though”, so there’s still hope yet. Having had a taste of the studio’s co-op chaos in Helldivers 2—and having missed the boat on Magicka, myself—I’d love to see what a modern take on the spell-slinging nonsense could look like. Especially if Magicka follows in Helldivers’ footsteps, and takes the series from isometric co-op to third-person mayhem.
But with the upcoming major updates to Helldivers 2 this September, it’s not like the studio’ll be moving on any time soon—which may mean more staff, which may mean more worries about capturing Magicka’s original madcap spirit, and so on into infinity.
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