“What you describe about diversification of the team here are true,” Monster Hunter series producer Ryozo Tsujimoto told VGC in an interview.
Before Monster Hunter World, those were consumable items, and you had to bring them with you in your item parts.
“I’ve been working on the series since the very first Monster Hunter game,” art director Kaname Fujioka told VGC.
“I feel with Monster Hunter World, we took a massive leap forward that we hadn’t managed to achieve in a single title before.
“One of the unique aspects will be related to the environmental change system that happens in Monster Hunter Wild.
Only the smallest peeks of the secrets within are given to us on the second floor of Capcom’s RandD1 building in Osaka, Japan. The majority of our time here is spent in a large, standard meeting room where we played Monster Hunter Wilds for several hours. We also had the opportunity to tour the building’s motion capture studio, one of three in the city, and a nearby audio department.
The aesthetics of corporate offices are generally unimpressive, based on my years of experience visiting different Japanese companies. Capcom seems to be no different, with the exception of a cafeteria with a Street Fighter theme concealed behind one of the many locked doors.
One thing, though, caught our attention: in both Japanese and English, the office’s numerous employee signs warn employees not to slam doors, place their trash in the wrong trash can, or even doze off on the toilet. Even though the majority of Japanese street signs have been in English for more than ten years, the addition still feels somewhat significant in the hallways of the studio that created Street Fighter and Resident Evil.
As a reliable producer of large, popular games that appeal to a worldwide audience, Capcom has established itself as the industry leader in its native country and, to some extent, the entire world, during the last seven years. During this time, the company has reported record-breaking profits for seven years in a row and has twice been ranked as the top publisher by Metacritic’s aggregate of press reviews. Also, its stock price hit a record high, and if you bought stock ten years ago, when it was releasing games like Lost Planet 3, Dead Rising 4, and Umbrella Corps, you would now be reaping rewards of more than a thousand times your initial investment.
There are a number of clear reasons for this prosperous time, not the least of which is that it improved quality control and released a number of top-notch games while staying true to its core competencies and utilizing its most well-known franchises. Additionally, the business has embraced a multiplatform approach, with notable success on PCs, vigorously promoted digital releases, and implemented its own internal technology platform, RE Engine, which facilitates critical knowledge exchange amongst all development teams.
However, the restroom sign serves as a reminder of another significant shift in Capcom’s culture that has been taking place behind the scenes: the company has been thinking more globally than ever before at its Japanese headquarters. As Japan’s home console market has declined, other publishers have tried to reach out to Western gamers more, but few have been as successful and genuine as the creator of Monster Hunter.
This is partially because, since 2018, Capcom’s Japanese division has doubled the percentage of foreign workers, who now account for almost 7% of the workforce, in an effort to better guarantee that its games appeal to a worldwide audience. Western producers also worked on the last Street Fighter, Devil May Cry, and Resident Evil video games. The company claims that in order to further promote diversity, it has improved its workplace by providing more yearly leave and housing assistance.
In an interview with VGC, Monster Hunter series producer Ryozo Tsujimoto stated, “What you describe about diversification of the team here is true.”. It is still primarily a Japanese company with a majority of Japanese employees, so we did not drastically change the organization’s structure. Yet, in addition to having more non-Japanese workers than ever before, the localization team—which is inevitably composed of non-Japanese individuals—has grown significantly in recent years, which has increased our games’ worldwide appeal.
Because of this, we are now able to release games in more languages and in more places. Importantly, though, we have become much better at communicating with our international employees who aren’t in Japan at this time. Our awareness or our capacity to distribute games at events is just as important as talking to them about the game’s content or getting player input. “.”.
“For example, if we want to exhibit at an event in a certain country, or if we want to show a trailer for the first time at a particular event that’s happening somewhere,” he continued. Our marketing strategy has become more globalized, and our various international teams now communicate with each other much more closely.
We communicate much more frequently now than we did in the past thanks to each of our local offices, who also keep us updated on what players in their areas are saying and thinking about our games.
Although that is obviously not development-specific, it does indicate that, as a company, we are likely much better equipped to carry out the type of worldwide hitmaking that we have been doing. I believe that internal globalization of that kind has significantly advanced our capacity to produce a worldwide title. “.”.
The global stage.
The best illustration of Capcom’s contemporary heyday is Monster Hunter World. The action RPG series has historically had trouble finding a following outside of Capcom’s home country, whereas Resident Evil and Street Fighter were always well-liked outside of Japan. After that, everything changed in 2017.
Monster Hunter World is now by far Capcom’s best-selling game ever, surpassing all previous Resident Evil, Street Fighter, and Devil May Cry titles with 20.9 million units (or 27 million if you include the stand-alone Iceborne expansion).
On MHW beta performance issues, Tokuda.
In actuality, the Open Beta test was an earlier iteration that contained a few bugs, one of which was that the monsters were moving more frequently than was intended.
“The fact that they were moving so quickly wasn’t really part of the design; we weren’t planning for it; they were just moving on every X seconds.
“We’ve already fixed that bug, and we’ve received a lot of feedback since the beta test. That and a lot of other things are being improved for the final game.”.
Additionally, the overall processing of how monsters choose their next course of action and where to go is being improved for the entire game.
People’s experiences with monsters will therefore be more akin to what you played [at the press event] and won’t be like the beta test, which was somewhat of an accident. “”.
Before that, the series had been around for 14 years and had almost always sold well in Japan, its home market. However, it wasn’t until the 2018 game that the franchise really found its footing on the international scene. Its clever gameplay changes, emphasis on online play, and simultaneous release on home consoles helped it achieve worldwide success.
This success, according to the game’s director Yuya Tokuda, who is also in charge of the next Wilds, was not an accident but rather the result of a major attempt to increase the franchise’s appeal.
“We really worked hard to make Monster Hunter World a worldwide success,” Tokuda told VGC. In my capacity as director, I considered it more of a general, comprehensive assessment of the series’ accessibility at the time than a strategy for winning over Western viewers.
A few particulars in particular really highlight this. Damage numbers, for instance, were never displayed previously. It was entertaining to read the monster’s behavior and know what you were doing, but if you couldn’t understand the feedback about whether you were doing the right thing right away, many players were ending the game because they couldn’t tell if the fight was even moving forward.
We didn’t add damage numbers carelessly, but after extensive testing with various players, we discovered that in general, it helped all players—not just Western players, but any player—better understand what was actually happening in the game at any given time. “”.
He went on: “When you receive rock-based materials, you can use pickaxes and similar tools to strike the rock formations on the map. That’s another example.”. These were consumable items prior to Monster Hunter World, and you had to carry them in your item parts. The five pickaxes, bug nets, and other equipment you had to bring would break after a few uses. Managing a persistent low-level item admin was required in order to collect resources that are truly essential for advancement. “.”.
In my capacity as director, I considered it more of a general, comprehensive assessment of the series’ accessibility at the time than a strategy for winning over Western viewers. “.”.
Tsujimoto, the series’ producer, concurs that World’s appeal was fueled by a number of minor adjustments rather than a significant makeover.
The concept of creating a game that is easy to pick up, fun to master, and enjoyable to play through is one that, in my opinion, hasn’t changed—it didn’t before World, and it hasn’t since. I believe that there are a number of aspects related to the gameplay itself that allowed us to enhance it and become more globally minded.
Just the game’s increased number of language localizations, for instance, is an example. Instead of having a six-month to a year-long delay like the previous titles, the localizations were released on the same date as the Japanese game worldwide. “.”.
“I think that getting all the aspects that you need to make a global AAA hit in the modern industry, getting all those things right in a way that maybe we hadn’t been taking the mark on before, I think it all came together with Monster Hunter World and created the massive success that we saw with that game,” he continued, adding that those factors are more pragmatic than gameplay. “.”.
The Wild Hunt.
Tokuda claims that his team took their time creating a true follow-up, as one might anticipate after a game as successful as World, in order to thoroughly examine the gameplay aspects that players found appealing and contributed to the 2017 game’s remarkable success.
With a greater emphasis on a seamless open world experience and better consideration for the onboarding of players who might be unfamiliar with the series, our six hours of hands-on experience with Monster Hunter Wilds indicate that Capcom has chosen to create a much more cinematic, RPG-style experience than its predecessor.
The slow-paced combat that fans enjoy is back and better than ever. The ability to switch between two weapons while hunting and the new “Focus” lock-on system, which lets players target particular body parts of monsters, feel like welcome additions that will add a lot of depth. However, hunting and exploring have also been greatly enhanced, with a genuinely open world and quick travel on horseback.
Importantly, players can now see on the game’s maps where specific items or monsters will be located based on the time of day. Along with a dynamic weather system that significantly influences which monsters will spawn, the game features a full day and night cycle.
According to Tokuda, a lot of these modifications were made using player data from Worlds. “We can see how far players were getting into the game before they lapsed or perhaps couldn’t progress any further thanks to the telemetry data we have from Monster Hunter World,” he said.
“We’ve been able to improve things like the onboarding process with tutorials, the difficulty curve, and the way we explain things in the game now that we’ve accumulated six years [of data] and observed what people react to in various regions and what they find too difficult to understand or anything like that. “.”.
The way quests are started is among the most interesting modifications made to Wilds versus World. Players can now start hunts straight on the map and remain on the map after a hunt is finished, in addition to the usual ways to start quests. Furthermore, Base Camp is now a part of the actual world map, allowing players to move between the different NPC helpers and actual monster hunting without encountering loading screens.
The amount of data needed to achieve this level of smooth integration in the game world required a significant amount of development work, according to Tokuda.
“So we have to constantly keep track in the background of all the AI behavior and movements and what they’re doing at any given time because there are a lot of monsters and NPCs moving around in the world and there’s no barrier between the human settlements and the maps anymore,” he explained.
“A lot of development work has gone into keeping all that stuff happening in the background so that no matter where the player goes, they feel like they’re experiencing like a living, breathing world where everyone’s behaving on their own accord.” This is especially accurate when you consider that the weather can change and that everyone’s behavior will change simultaneously.
It was quite a task to get us to this point, but I believe that not having to restart the game every time you want to hunt a monster adds a new level of immersion to the experience. “”.
pursuing a monster.
Working on Monster Hunter Wilds should appear to be quite different from World from the outside. With the latter, Capcom aimed to draw more people to one of its well-established franchises. The pressure of following up on the most significant game in the company’s history, however, comes with Wilds.
“Since the first Monster Hunter game, I have been working on the series,” art director Kaname Fujioka told VGC. “I believe we made a huge advancement with Monster Hunter World that we hadn’t been able to accomplish in any other game. Numerous new players joined the community and are currently traveling with us.
Tokuda on MHW’s final strategy.
We’ll go into the specifics later, but we want to offer an end-game experience that allows for a great cycle of personalizing your skills and decorations and upgrading your equipment to hunt particular monsters.
“The environmental change system that takes place in Monster Hunter Wild will be one of the distinctive features. You’ll be engaging in activities such as fostering a mutually beneficial relationship between the environment and the creatures you’re hunting.
It’s possible that hunting this monster now will eventually make it easier or harder to hunt later. I’m sure that players who enjoy [old games’] end-game cycles will be thrilled with what’s coming, though the specifics will be covered later. “.”.
“It may seem apparent that you would experience pressure, but for me, it was more about the difficulty of continuously considering how to meet those players’ needs with the upcoming game. “.”.
Director Tokuda concurred that working on World with Wilds had been a good experience, and he said he was eager to advance the design without being constrained by outdated console hardware.
“We really challenged ourselves to push the series in all kinds of new ways and make a lot of bold new decisions about the game design in an effort to expand the audience way beyond what we’d seen before,” he said of Monster Hunter World.
“That endeavor was so successful that, at least in the early stages of the project’s design phase, I actually found it to be a really positive and exciting experience rather than feeling pressured from working on the follow-up to our best-selling title ever,” he continued.
That’s not to say that later pressures didn’t arise. But I had the notion that, given the advancements in hardware over the past six years, I could take something that had already been shown to be a successful concept and make it even better in Monster Hunter World. “”.
Despite the fact that he appears to be under more pressure than most, series producer Tsujimoto maintained that World’s impressive sales numbers did not necessarily add to this.
It’s a good point that World was our best-selling game ever, and I want to make sure that we follow up on it. Perhaps as a producer, I’m the one who has to bear all the pressure that these guys don’t get. Although it isn’t exactly a sequel, it is the franchise’s next development.
With Monster Hunter World, the game’s audience grew to its largest level ever, but at the same time, the series’ global reach extended beyond its player base. It doesn’t really matter how big the game is or how successful you’re building on in the past; this is our largest Monster Hunter development project to date, and I feel pressured to do well as a producer or project manager.
“The core principles of constantly improving, pushing the boundaries of the next game, building on past work, and attending to player needs and feedback have remained consistent for me throughout my career and the 20 years of Monster Hunter. Whether the previous game was a big project or a best-seller, I have considered it for all of them nonetheless. “.”.
