Forget Agile Coaching. Join the Helldivers!

The galaxy’s last line of offense

Helldivers 2 is the game that surprised everyone in early 2024. Created by the previously relatively unknown Swedish studio Arrowhead, it caught the attention and enthusiasm of gamers unprepared and snatched an impressive number of awards and got a lot of love and engagement from an unexpectedly large army of players (12 million as of May 2024) joining the over-the-top fight for Freedom and Managed Democracy, as best illustrated in the game’s intro:

In May of the same year the company triggered a veritable sh*tstorm from the community after making account linking with Sony’s PSN network mandatory also for non-Playstation players without prior warning and as a combination of Sony’s restrictive policies and the studio’s bad communication.

Averting disaster, the company, just like a squad of true Helldivers in the thick of the action, managed to turn things around and handled the situation more or less gracefully with the CEO showing unusual openness in admitting a mistake and correcting it.

Happy ending so far: Pressured by the powerful community of gamers, Arrowhead seems to have convinced Sony to drop the account linking requirement. And now everyone is back happily defending Super Earth!

Dive into hell

A game of Helldivers starts, as the name suggests, with a dive down into hell. As member of a squad of Helldivers you step into your one-person capsule called a “Hellpod”, a kamikaze artillery shell that contains a human and you are violently launched from space right onto the surface of some desolate, hostile hellhole of a planet. Most of the time you land in the middle of enemy positions or patrols and have to start fighting before you can even catch your breath from the impact.

As a Helldiver you are one of the endless ranks of humans enlisted into a vast space marine military force. Your job is to defend Super Earth, the home of humanity against alien insect-like like creatures, humanoid cyborg automatons and other dangers that may await out there in the darkness of an .

As “humanity’s last line of offense” Helldivers don’t wait for the enemy to come to them. They use their individual destroyer spaceships (every player has one which they can give a fancy name), select a planet of their choice and fly straight to the action.

Once arrived in orbit above the planet, you will typically find the planet surrounded by hundreds to thousands of fellow destroyers, the horizon flashing from bombardments, laser beams and artillery barrages they deliver to the planetary surface.

From the large globe-shaped map in the center of your bridge you can either start your own mission and invite other Helldivers to join you – or join other Helldivers on their ships answering their “SOS” beacons.

It is simple

Why is this game so appealing? Reason one: it is simple, almost lean. The game design is minimalistic to the core. There is virtually no story apart from the dynamic one that is unfolding in real time for the whole community (see below). Even the tutorial is a joke and doesn’t really teach you anything, but this is part of the story. There is little clutter or overhead. You select a mission, jump into a Hellpod, dive down, fight, extract, buy new weapons and equipment, jump into the next Hellpod, and repeat …

It is crazy

The game’s presentation and setting is totally over the top, filled with sarcasm, satire and dark humor.

Humanity is presented as the good guys fighting for the good cause of liberating the galaxy with a weird combination of progressive, universalist messaging and totalitarian, militaristic undertones and aesthetics.

Humanity – represented by the Helldivers – fights to liberate the galaxy from evil aliens and enemies of freedom Why? No questions asked. As stated by in-game hints: The existence of re-education camps for citizens who have doubts in Managed Democracy is merely disinformation!

All that sounds a bit like “Starship Troopers“? Yep … :D

It’s community-based

The game’s strength is in the power of its community. From the very beginning players took spreading Managed Democracy extremely seriously, showing their enthusiasm on platforms like Reddit, X, Instagram, making the game go viral.

The game designers found that they had created an experience that hypercharged community engagement, did not need a lot of marketing and

It’s fun

This community drive creates an effective psychological motivation cycle. Throughout the game there is a feeling that your actions and achievements as a player matter – not just for your own character’s progress, but for the Galaxy.

From the first second you get hooked, get curious about what will happen next and get more eager to raise the flag of Super Earth and liberate more planets together with hundreds of thousands of others.

This motivational dynamics works even in the absence of competition between players, overall rankings / high scores or other badges, awards etc. It’s all about the shared success.

It’s agile!

After playing too many hours of the game I can also say: it has a very agile feel to it which is worth diving deeper into:

Two pizza teams

A strike team of Helldivers consists of up to 4 people, so essentially a team on the more hungry end of a “two pizza” team continuum.

You can try missions alone but at least on higher difficulties you should know what you’re doing, and you will likely find that the game is not really built for solo play. It is essentially a coop and PvE (player vs environment) game. The game’s matchmaking mechanic also tries to fill up every squad to the four player limit.

Four turns out to be a good number in relation to how the game works. Squads can split up dynamically 2:2, 1:1:1:1, 2:1:1, 3:1, or huddle all together in a Rugby-like “Scrum” against more hardened enemy positions.

Cross-functionality

Before starting a mission, players choose their individual loadouts in terms of armor, weapons, special equipment (from jetpacks to mech warrior suits) and “stratagems” (supporting activities every player can call in from their destroyer – such as the famous “half a ton of democracy” bomb strike).

Players see what the others are choosing and can align on the best combination considering mission objectives, terrain, weather, enemy etc. (you also get some intel beforehand).

This makes the team automatically go for a crossfunctional setup, meaning that they combine different specializations to match the demands of their mission and raise their collective chance of success.

Timeboxing

Game sessions in Helldivers 2 are timeboxed. A timebox can be somewhere between 12 and 40 minutes, depending on the type of mission.

When the timebox ends, the game doesn’t simply stop – but it takes away all support, meaning when the clock stops ticking the squad is really on its own without further supplies, ammunition, stratagems, reinforcements. And this can become very, very painful (more than just aborting the game).

After breaking the mission timebox, a Squad may – against all odds – still succeed – but most players except a few adrenalin seekers or masochists will want to avoid repeating this experience and will automatically try to stick to the timebox next time. :D

Leadership without hierarchy

In Helldivers 2, everyone is a leader. There is no hierarchy, all Helldivers are equal.

For example when you are on a mission you navigate your way between objectives using a mini map in the lower right corner of the screen. Every player can set their own way points on this map indicating where to go or attack next, regardless of where the other players are putting their markers (“dropping a pin, west, 200 meters”).

Players use this as a form of communication. When one sets a pin somewhere, others may follow or split off towards other targets. Leadership is changing and dynamic based on the situation and on who players think has the best idea at the moment and should take the lead – until someone else takes over – or everyone just does their thing.

In the end, it’s about self-stabilization of the team and continuous alignment that happens naturally like in a grooved-in Scrum team (more on team dynamics below).

Communication

Using map pins is one form of communication, others are – of course – teamspeak / voice communication, plus other non-verbal forms of communication. One is marking objects, locations and enemies in an augmented reality way directly on the screen (“enemy patrol, south”), shortcut commands (“follow me”), but also: movement in three-dimensional space.

Good Helldivers always stay aware of what their fellow squad members are doing – and by being aware that the others are being aware of them, every small action becomes an act of communication.

A Helldiver e.g. quietly climbing up the right side of a hill towards an Automaton replicator while not yet engaging the enemy can indicate to another Helldiver: “ok, I’ll take the left side, get an eagle stratagem ready and wait for my mate to open fire.”

In-game moments like this, where communication happens without words are what makes this game special.

Community objectives

Helldivers 2 revolves around objectives. There are personal objectives such as “kill 100 bots with weapon X” and there are community objectives (“liberate planets x, y, z within two days”).

While personal objectives are something you follow on the side and usually quickly achieve within a few rounds of playing, the interesting part are the community objectives.

Collective reward, collective punishment is the name of the game here. When Super Earth command issues a general order, this goes not just for some regions or local servers but for everyone. The objective can only be fulfilled on a global level and either everyone gets a reward (which is even the same for everyone) or nobody gets it.

An impressive example was the major order given to all Helldivers to eliminate two billion Terminids (a.k.a. bugs) within six days.

Based only on free choice and intrinsic motivation, hundreds of thousands of Helldivers went completely crazy and managed to eliminate the targeted two billion bugs in less than a day. Which led to discussions how to make objectives more challenging given such unexpected levels of engagement for the common cause.

Freedom

Everything in Helldivers 2 is based on individual choice and freedom.

It starts in the safe space of your personal star destroyer where you may hear the announcements and orders from Super Earth high command – or simply ignore them. You may also choose completely different objectives, do your thing, collect samples to upgrade your stratagems or fight on planets that nobody else cares about.

The fascinating thing: this freedom does not lead to a situation where everyone just does what they want. On the contrary: they follow the orders of Super Earth High Command even more diligently because they choose to do so.

Law of two feet

With freedom comes the law of two feet, known from open spaces and unconferences It basically says: If you feel that you don’t get any more value where you are right now and/or don’t add any value – then simply leave, and go somewhere else.

Helldivers 2 implements this on many levels, from decisions every player takes inside a mission up to the decision if and how you want to follow the current community or personal objectives, which planet you choose to fight on, which operation or individual mission you join – or leave.

You can jump into already running missions (like in an open space workshop), kill a few bugs, deliver some good old democracy in the form of napalm strikes and liberate a piece of irradiated wasteland from ugly aliens – and then just leave and move on to the next disaster zone or go home to your destroyer and upgrade your weapons. No justification needed. Nobody will blame you, no questions asked.

Team dynamics

Agile teams typically go through more or less clearly separated stages of team development. One widely used model to describe this is the “Tuckman model” (forming – storming – norming – performing – adjourning).

The same happens with the four person squads in Helldivers – but in a much faster way since there are only a few minutes to go from forming to performing.

Inside a 40 minute mission you typically get thrown together by the matchmaking algorithm with completely strange people from different parts of the planet (Earth, not Super Earth) whom you have never met before.

The only thing you see is: a player’s rank – indicating how many hours they have played, their title such as Space Cadet, Death Captain, Skull Admiral …, the way they present themselves in terms of uniform, helmet, cape etc., their user names. Apart from this, all Helldivers are equal.

Just like in real life, effective team building in Helldivers 2 happens not during some offsite retreat with simulated games (ok, the whole thing is a game / simulation), but in the middle of the action facing an unforgiving enemy and the possibility of real defeat and death.

The moment the Helldivers are dropped on a planet, they have to quickly organize themselves around their objectives without any further guidance or help from outside.

This typically happens swiftly and without need for coordination or instructions. People just instinctively grasp each others’ peculiarities through interacting with each other. And this is true even within the abstraction layer of online games.

One Helldiver may single-mindedly run off towards some remote secondary objective while two others, shaking their helmets, will patiently prepare their support weapons and wait for number four to tell them what the plan is.

In any case, Helldivers’ understanding of each others’ characters grows intuitively and naturally over the course of a mission – or even more over a three-mission operation. And with this understanding comes the development of a more or less effectively collaborating team. It is fascinating – also from a team management and coaching perspective – to see the wide range of different patterns, behaviors, strategies that emerge ad-hoc from a team of Helldivers.

Managed randomness

Another defining aspect of the game its built-in combination of random events and a continuously evolving story.

Untypical for shooter games but similar to role playing games such as AD&D, Helldivers 2 has an actual game master, Joel, with (seemingly) a real name and identity, even with a LinkedIn account:

Joel has a degree of freedom in choosing what happens next, creating the dramaturgy for the continuously unfolding story of the Helldivers universe.

Joel apparently works with a combination of tools and techniques including AI and data analytics making the experience even more dynamic and engaging while keeping the narrative consistently “human” with gamers constantly speculating and discussing what Joel might be up to next.

It has bugs

The game not only involves bugs (a.k.a. “Terminids”) as enemies – but it also managed to come out quite buggy at launch time without affecting the loyalty of gamers too much.

One reason for this was that there were no over-promises. The game was launched in a deliberately imperfect state, as a kind of MVP. It worked, it showed its future potential without pretending to be perfect.

Just like the Helldivers story that keeps developing and unfolding with minimal “front loading” in the course of the collective actions of the gaming community, the same applies to game mechanics, features, weapons, enemies etc. – up to the stability of the software and infrastructure.

Four Ideas How to Use Helldivers 2 to Become More Agile

Agile training

Helldivers 2 can work well as part of an agile training course creating awareness of the many aspects of agility incorporated in it, from cross-functionality to goal-driven self-organization of a team.

Team building

The game’s emphasis on team collaboration can be used to simulate and enact the formation of small (sub-) teams and create cohesion among team members.

Retrospectives

There are many potential uses of the game in retrospectives, only limited by the facilitator’s creativity, from playful competition, resolving conflicts, coming up with new strategies to overcome impediments.

Letting off steam

Sometimes there is just need to change the perspective, unfocus from real-life problems and reduce stress levels. The game can be a good tool for that.

Pragmatic Agility Game Score

All things considered, we give Helldivers 2 a solid 92% Pragmatic Agility Game Score and recommend it to every agilist out there who needs an excuse to indulge in the guilty pleasure of playing a coop tactical shooter game killing scores of bugs and bots while experiencing agility in action.