Helldiving for peace
Can we Mobilize Around the Political Subtext in a Gaming Fandom Towards a World Without War?
Background
The game: HellDivers2
A new viral video game titled HellDivers2 released on February 8th, 2024 has become wildly popular - far exceeding the developer’s expectations - and selling over 8 million units within the first two months of its release.
The developer is Arrowhead Game Studios based in Stockholm, Sweden.
HellDivers2 is a third-person cooperative multiplayer shooter built around a provocative satire of U.S. military recruitment that is critical of the lies that are told to recruits. The game's cold-open explains it all.
HellDivers2 is often described as a "Starship Troopers video game,” a satirical experience similar to the plot of the 1997 film where a fascist human state manufactures and wages war with giant alien bugs.
The official HellDivers2 Discord server had over 250K members at the time I joined (current number of members is hidden from my level of access).
content warning: violence and gore — the opening cinematic for HellDivers2 that contextualizes the satirical anti-war elements.
The Group: Gamers for Peace
Gamers For Peace (GFP) began as a community-led initiative of Veterans for Peace (VFP) – it is now run autonomously by its members.
They describe themselves as a group “dedicated to confronting military recruitment in gaming and hobby spaces such as video gaming, esports, and social media. We are organizing to take back our hobby spaces and to create inclusive, demilitarized gaming spaces. We hope to use these spaces as an opportunity to talk about the intersections of peace and social justice activism within gaming communities.”
For the purposes of this experiment, the Gamers for Peace Discord server will be the container for which I will attempt to drive HellDivers2 player to — a low level action as a stepping stone to future engagement.
Assumption
HellDivers2 fandom is able to be activated into an politicized digital community — Gamers for Peace — a group that works to disrupt real military recruitment in online gaming, shares resources around anti-war efforts, and has fun while doing it.
With the help of volunteer Gamers for Peace participants we could move HellDivers2 players from the official HellDivers2 Discord and from in-game matches into the Gamers for Peace server.
Falsifiable Hypothesis
We believe that 1 hour a day of HellDivers2 group gameplay will drive one new individual over to the Gamers for Peace Discord.
We believe that 1 hour a day spent on the official HellDivers2 Discord will drive at least 20 new attendees to the Gamers for Peace Discord.
Setup
Build relationships with Gamers for Peace moderators and active members.
Get affirmation that is okay with Gamers for Peace moderators and active members for PitaBreadFace to recruit from HellDivers2 gaming and Discord into the server.
Play HellDivers2 at least 20 hours in order to level up to be a more appealing teammate and to learn in-game lore for Discord chats.
Key Learnings (7/22/24)
HellDivers2 is a very violent game and playing it a lot in a time of horrific war in-real-life is challenging for me.
My experience in war games is extensive, I love espionage or stealth experiences like the Metal Gear series, however being forced to role-play as a member of a fascist war-mongering entity in bloody video game was too challenging for me to do regularly.
I found myself spending more time in the Discord to avoid having to dive deeper into the actual gameplay.
The majority of the HellDivers 2 fans I met were not interested in the anti-war critique embedded deeply in the games satire. They fully embraced role-playing as the fascist protagonists. For this reason, my colleagues and I likened organizing attempts in this fandom as organizing in a deep red area.
Streaming while running my experiments within the game and Discord attracted helpful, kind, and engaged support who chatted me through learning the rules of the game and troubleshooted organizing approaches in the Discord.
Lessons from gameplay & matchmaking
Matchmaking directly from the in-game server produced inconsistent pools of players to engage with. Mics for chatting were rarely on, players weren’t team driven, few people wanted to actually engage in conversation, trolling was rampant especially towards me since I was new to the game (several people referred to me as a FNG “f***ing new guy”).
I quickly realized that I needed to make myself more desirable to play with in both my script and my ability to play the game. I tried on different attitudes while playing — at times I took on a bold and engaging tone, sometimes extra playful, some trash talking, sometimes genuine and seeking support from more advanced players. All produced inconsistent and indiscernable results.
I was often third or fourth wheeling with an established crew of friends when I was matchmaking. Not all squads were interested in me as part of their team, they were just letting another person play with. On the rare occassion that I found a group who was nice enough to engage, I spent that time trying to learn how they got connected and started playing with each other. On the two occasions that a squad was engaging with me I learned that Discord was the core-vehicle that drove their gaming relationships.
Nearly half of all players I engaged with in squads were streaming on Twitch. All had small followings (100-200 followers on Twitch) and their friends who they played with regularly were also fans from their niche streams.
Lessons from the Discord
The Discord is immensely active and serves multiple purposes for fans of the HellDivers world. It is a place for role-playing, getting updates on new in-game content, challenges, fan art, matchmaking with like-minded players, troubleshooting, building relationships, discussing and debating opinions about the game’s content or gameplay strategeis, and — like most Discords — sharing food and pet pictures.
The larger Discord server has 21 different chats. Finding the correct one to do my canvassing based around the anti-war satire was important. Not participating correctly in the designated chat could lead to getting a warning from one of the server’s many moderators.
The majority of my time was spent canvassing the “lore” chat. I decided on this chat because it was mostly populated by regulars who were deep fans of the game and who were engaging with rich satire. Several regulars who I encountered in the “lore” chat consistently referred to the war-mongering “Super Earth” citizens as fascists. They referred to the game’s antagonists (“bugs” and “automotons”) as “freedom fighters.”
Role-playing in the “lore” chat was essential to building a sturdy enough relationship with other players to then make my recruitment asks. All attempts to break the rules of the chat and start conversations about real-life war, conflict, and anti-war organizing were shot down almost immediately. When I initated conversations about real-life war through direct engagement with the game’s foundational plot and story, I started building relationships and was able to make my asks.
Participation in a active Discord and live-service gaming community such as this one requires a tremendous amount of time. I quickly learned that my relevance to the “lore” chat was contingent on me staying up to date with the fast-paced barrage of memes, developer updates, in-game announcements, and trending fan issues with the community and the game.
Identifying potential recruits to Gamers for Peace does not always require chatting. I started quickly noticing a micro-conflict within the reactions to develop updates in the Discord. Members would often react to posts with Palestine or Israeli flags. To almost every post it became a numbers battle — the flag with the most reacts wins. In clicking on those flags you can find the list of users who gave that reaction. I spent some time sending direct messages to users who made Palestine flag reacts and I believe it is a effective and streamlined way to start meaningful conversations with other players.
All asks must happen through direct message or you will get booted. I was streaming while chatting in the Discord one day when a Twitch chatter warned me not to make asks to join other Discords within the HellDivers2 server. It is a bannable offense to attempt to solicit or encourage members of one server to join another.
The brief and not over-bearing script is essential. I learned this from ‘plantifa’ at Gamers for Peace, but the shorter and sweeter the direct message, the better. With every relationship I made in the Discord I had a great success rate with this simple script: “hey if you're passionate about the anti-war satire in this game. Im on a discord called "Gamers for Peace" we talk, create community, and share resources/organize around demilitarized gaming spaces. lots of cozy gaming currently, but aspiring to grow it with good people, feel free to take a look [link]”
whats next?
This experiment — despite taking a short break from it — is ongoing. The hope is to continue organizing efforts within HellDivers2 with a established crew of volunteers who enjoy the game.
Ideas for consideration: streaming “pascifist runs” and “defector runs” of HellDivers 2 missions — attracting and building conversation with the games fandom by skillfully breaking the rules of the game while completing the overall mission.
If you’re a HellDivers2 Player and want to get involved email me at sijal@kairosfellows.org to get connected on next steps.
