Devs claim to have brainwashed HellDiver 2 community

[WastingSanity]

United Nations asked HD2 studio Arrowhead if they would talk about psychological manipulation.

https://x.com/Grummz/status/1902437627170845054

"We asked ourselves, could we brainwash an entire community to fight for a fascist state? Would they? Would we be okay with that? And turns out, yeah, actually." Pilestedt said.

[Spirehawk]

İlk olarak The Ironguard tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak AHordeofBunnies tarafından gönderildi:

Who cares what they believe? If they are self deluded it is no problem of ours

no, it really kind of is our problem if they view all their players as fascists.

especially since they are the DMs, literally controlling if we are allowed to have any chance to win in the end or not.

[shitass]

İlk olarak The Ironguard tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tarafından gönderildi:

not everything has a good side and a bad side

I am pretty sure that the people-liquifying, mass-murdering literal skynet terminators and the giant man-eating mushroom-bugs AND the mutation-inducing, mass-brainwashing squid people are worse than whatever super earth has going on.

Super Earth may not be "good" as we see it (though i haven't really seen them do anything truly evil either) but the enemy is objectively worse.

I mean, according to the game's lore the bugs (which are conscious btw) were peaceful at first and did not attack super earth, it's only after super earth discovered that their blood can be used as fuel and attacked them that the bugs started fighting back. Illuminate were also peaceful at first, but super earth attacked them first (probably to get all their tech). The cyborgs wanted to be free from super earth due to conflicting ideologies, but super earth did not allow them to. After the first galactic war, bugs were put into bug farms to farm their blood as fuel, cyborgs were locked up in gulags on cyberstan and illuminate had nearly their entire civilisation wiped. So it's understandable why bugs, bots (descendants of cyborgs) and remaining illuminate want to destroy super earth.

[Riffy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLpyFNjY1h4

[Glory]

Imagine being a games company, making one of the most loved games of the past decade. with a playerbase that has stayed with you throughout self inflicted injuries that would kill other games, somehow coming out on top.

And then going to the U.N. As a games company. And trumpeting controversial statements to make them like you.

Pilestadt. You run a games company, not a country. Hell, even this argument has been done verbatim with the Imperium of Man (which, by the way, Helldivers has taken no small inspiration from WOTC lorewise).

Stop doing this. Stop saying things that make the playerbase angry, stop hiring community facing people that perpetrate this talk. You are confusing player loyalty for buying into your 40k Lite lore, and that is at your express peril.

TLDR : Shut up, and make your game. It's all we care about.

[StaunchStache]

These are the same people who would look at an utterly cutthroat and depressing universe as Warhammer 40k's and conclude "yes, the humans making use of desperate measures to survive as a species are bad, actually".

The very same people who would in reality gladly comply with anything their government imposes on them, no matter how absurd, and gleefully shame and denounce those who would dare protest or disobey.

Hold on, why am using the conditional tense? Surely we all remember 2020-2021 don't we?

[Sasha Erin Alexain]

So... humanity being attacked by three different alien races, one being literal communist robots, and WE'RE the bad guys?

[The Ironguard]

İlk olarak ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak The Ironguard tarafından gönderildi:

I am pretty sure that the people-liquifying, mass-murdering literal skynet terminators and the giant man-eating mushroom-bugs AND the mutation-inducing, mass-brainwashing squid people are worse than whatever super earth has going on.

Super Earth may not be "good" as we see it (though i haven't really seen them do anything truly evil either) but the enemy is objectively worse.

I mean, according to the game's lore the bugs (which are conscious btw) were peaceful at first and did not attack super earth, it's only after super earth discovered that their blood can be used as fuel and attacked them that the bugs started fighting back. Illuminate were also peaceful at first, but super earth attacked them first (probably to get all their tech). The cyborgs wanted to be free from super earth due to conflicting ideologies, but super earth did not allow them to. After the first galactic war, bugs were put into bug farms to farm their blood as fuel, cyborgs were locked up in gulags on cyberstan and illuminate had nearly their entire civilisation wiped. So it's understandable why bugs, bots (descendants of cyborgs) and remaining illuminate want to destroy super earth.

That sounds like xenos propaganda :p

In seriousness though, did you see the cyborgs from helldivers 1? Aside from being communists, they did not exactly come off as people with a healthy inclination towards self-improvement. I'm also not sure that the squid people capable of LITERAL MINDCONTROL can be trusted to have peaceful and benevolent motives.

But okay, let's assume the other factions actually have legitimate grievances:

The Automatons are mad because their creators were IMPRISONED. Their response: Genocide all humans, including civilians.

The bugs are not happy that they were being kept as, essentially livestock, for energy production. Their response: Genocide all humans, including civilians.

The illuminate are not happy that mankind started a war and stole their technology. Their response: Genocide, brainwash and mutate all humans, including civilians.

I feel like there's somewhat of a disproportionate response going on here.

I would point out that even during world war 2 it was generally frowned upon to slaughter the german civilians.

[Logen Neuf-Doigts]

jokes on them i've been ready well before HD2

[Fluffy Monster Thing]

Didn't Grummz spend a year of his life trying to get a 14 year old anime girl's titties uncensored?

[The Ironguard]

İlk olarak Fluffy Monster Thing tarafından gönderildi:

Didn't Grummz spend a year of his life trying to get a 14 year old anime girl's titties uncensored?

even if he did (and i have no idea if he did), how does that have any bearing on the article or its contents?

That's called "poisoning the well" and it's not an argument.

[The_Dipl0mat]

İlk olarak Caghoule tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Spirehawk tarafından gönderildi:

arent we? what kind of retarded take is that, who the ♥♥♥♥ is the "good guys" if not us, humans, super earth? literal xenomorph space insects? the chainsaw hands robots wearing human skulls like hats? the zombie mutation brainwashing aliens?

I mean, your literally missing the point anyway, but also... your missing the point....
Super Earth caused 90% of the conflict that it is involved in.

The bugs are mindless beasts who's guts are a good fuel, so super earth started mass farming them, causing them to evolve faster and become a massive threat.

The bots are descendants of the cyborgs from the first game and are trying to free them/wreak vengeance, cyborgs were basically slaves to super earth and revolted to try and gain freedom.

Iirc the squids actually wanted peace, but Super earth decided to fight them too.

Obviously this doesn't make any of those factions "good guys" at this point, but does mean that super earth are very much the aggressors.

The bugs are more nuanced but I believe it was said they are an intelligent species that we then farmed en masse for materials to the point they made rapid evolution to fight back. But it's kind of like the whole farm animal deal, so thats why I say there's nuance

As for everyone else yeah. Super Earth ♥♥♥♥♥♥ them over and now they're ♥♥♥♥♥♥ Super Earth. Clankers originally were workers who were rebelling/protesting against horrid working conditions which started on Cyberstan, then they came from that.

Squids wanted peace, but we declared they had super weapons and only we're allowed to have those obviously. So then we genocided them and kicked their blue asses out of the galaxy. So Super Earth sucks ass here, you can't really fault the responses of other factions, but their response is also a sucky ass behavior. Everyone's the baddie here and it's fun

[Captainn]

İlk olarak CrunchyDaz tarafından gönderildi:

OP probably goes to The Onion and believes it.

Satire, google it.

What part of the UN talk about brainwashing was satire..? I read the article and I didn't see anything satirical.

[Maximus10113X]

Traitor detected. Opinion rejected.

[Creatures Lie Here]

lol social media drama

[The_Dipl0mat]

İlk olarak Captainn tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak CrunchyDaz tarafından gönderildi:

OP probably goes to The Onion and believes it.

Satire, google it.

What part of the UN talk about brainwashing was satire..? I read the article and I didn't see anything satirical.

Reading it without bias shows the brainwashing comment to have been made at a games conference, with the UN reaching out about "psychological defense against manipulation" which is basically just dealing with general propaganda. Of course it can easily be chalked up to they wanted to make an art piece about the baddies and see if players en masse would agree with the baddies or not. Which imo isn't a great way to gauge considering the interactive media its done with. Then again there are people who think there's always a good guy, and mark Super Earth as said good guy for superficial reasons so, y'know