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BBC News
28-02-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Monster Hunter Wilds: How the series conquered the world
The latest release in one of Japan's most popular video game series has had one of the most successful debuts of all one million people were logged on to the PC version of Monster Hunter Wilds at the same time within hours of its launch, according to figures from online store have been complaints from the first wave of players on Steam about the game's performance on computers, but its critical response has been Newsbeat spoke to director Yuya Tokuda and producer Ryozo Tsujimoto prior to the release of Wilds about turning the game into a global hit. Monster Hunter first launched on the PlayStation 2 in 2004. As the title suggests, players spend the game navigating an area known as The Forbidden Lands capturing and battling a cast of increasingly fearsome fans of the series are drawn in by its challenging, complex systems and option to play co-operatively, teaming up with friends to take down massive foes. Breakout 2018 hit Monster Hunter World has has sold 21.3 million copies, according to publisher Capcom, rising to 28.1 million when sales of an upgraded 2019 edition are Mr Tsujimoto told BBC Newsbeat the game was a culmination of all the work and lessons learned from previous titles on the series. "Anything that we hadn't been doing we really tried to do with Monster Hunter World to get everything ready so that the game was ready to break through," he said. Games industry layoffs and studio closures in the West and Europe have led to fears of "brain drain" - a loss of knowledge as people leave companies or even look for work in different where employment protections for workers are much stronger, has not been as badly affected and developers often stay with the same company for a long Hunter director Mr Tokuda says he's worked on the series for 20 years and it's fed into his work on Wilds."It's the groundwork that you create with your previous titles that you hope can inform the success of later ones," he says."We have the ability to take data from past titles like Monster Hunter World and analyse that data in order to understand what players were enjoying and what we could improve."Other Japanese studios are known for taking this iterative approach and building on what has come Ga Gotoku Studio, the makers of the popular Yakuza series and its Like a Dragon spin-offs, have put out a new game more or less every year since 2020. The company's boss Masayoshi Yokoyama has spoken openly about how the team is happy to revisit previous locations and reuse elements from earlier games rather doing a "fresh reboot" each time. This can help to lower development costs and reduce the time it takes to make new titles. 'We're working in our own lanes' The Japanese games industry was a dominant force from the 1980s until the early 2000s, but a power shift saw Western developers begin to lead the way. More recently, the country has been behind some of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful titles last year's Game Awards - described by some as the industry's answer to The Oscars - Japanese-made games occupied four of the six Game of the Year Tsujimoto says he can't pinpoint a specific reason for this, but says the Monster Hunter team has learned there are certain things needed to make a "triple-A success in today's market".That includes translating games into various languages so they can be released simultaneously in different countries, and being mindful of growing your audience."We're always careful to design the experience so new players can get into the game," he adds. Japan does face some of the same challenges as other developers habits are changing, with PC gaming increasing in popularity, and as technology becomes more advanced making games becomes more Tsujimoto says generational leaps "push the industry forward", bringing "new opportunities and new complexities". "I don't think it's necessarily the most difficult it's ever been but there are always new challenges whenever technology leaps forward."The games industry is also more competitive than ever - more video games are being released, and players are tending to stick with the same ones for longer leaves publishers of new releases fighting over a much smaller share of players' free time and 2025 has already been packed with big new Tsujimoto insists they haven't paid too much attention to that while working on Monster Hunter Wilds."It looks like a big year for everyone but we're really all just working in our own lanes," he says."We happened to have this launch window that's on the verge of some other big releases but we don't have access to that information before the general public."For an established series that suddenly explodes in popularity, Mr Tokuda says a big challenge is pleasing old and new fans."You always have in your mind that there's people waiting for your next creation and they're the players you want to satisfy," he says."But you also have your own creative idea and want to follow that through." Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays - or listen back here.
Yahoo
24-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Monster Hunter' on prowl for new audiences as latest game drops
With "Monster Hunter Wilds" pitting intrepid players against a menagerie of rampaging beasts on PC and consoles from Friday, the game's creators tell AFP they hope the 20-year-old franchise can still find new audiences. It has been seven years since the last major instalment saw fans draw oversized swords and bows together, in a series whose success is built on cooperative play to take down dragons and other spectacularly-rendered creatures. Co-op is "really the heart of the series and at the core of its DNA," said the game's director Yuya Tokuda. Long queues to test the new instalment at conventions and mass participation in an online open test weekend in October have underscored the anticipation in recent months. "Rather than feeling pressure... it's actually more of a useful chance for us to see the players' reactions and also get data about what it is we should be working on," Ryozo Tsujimoto, the series' 50-something longtime producer said during a trip to Europe weeks ahead of the release. "Wilds" is the first "Monster Hunter" instalment built for latest-generation consoles. Tsujimoto says this will allow for "even more seamless" play, highlighting that there will be no loading screens between players' base camp and the monster-haunted open world beyond. Such changes "make you feel like you really are part of the ecosystem from start to finish every time you play the game," he said. But even on more powerful machines, it was "really quite difficult" to populate the environment with the huge numbers of monsters and other creatures that the developers wanted, Tsujimoto added. There were "lots of programming challenges and also hardware challenges," he said. - Stoking the hype - The "Monster Hunter" series has shipped more than 108 million units since the first release on Playstation 2, making it a second tentpole franchise for Japanese publisher Capcom alongside the "Resident Evil" zombie saga. It took time and several instalments for "Monster Hunter" to win popularity outside Japan itself. Back then, "we didn't really have a development schedule... set up for simultaneous localised release around the world," Tsujimoto remembers. That meant delays of up to a year for different language versions to be adapted, undermining the hype around new releases beyond the home market. "All the news about what was going to be in the game, which monsters and features, had already come out globally, players felt like they'd seen it all from looking online," Tsujimoto said. These days releases are synchronised around the world to strike while the anticipation is at its peak. - Broadening reach - "Monster Hunter" has also benefited from vastly more players able to join in online with high-quality connections. "Breaking down each of those barriers... is what finally brought us out of niche status in the West and into a global blockbuster," Tsujimoto said. Nevertheless, "there are still people out there who don't know about 'Monster Hunter'," he added. It was up to the studio to "try and find new ways to make sure that the 'Monster Hunter' name spreads among as large an audience around the world as possible". A first film set in the universe of the games, released in 2020, was a relative flop. That hasn't put off Tsujimoto, who says "image licensing" is "something we're aways considering as being on the table". Although naming no plans for the immediate future, the producer is "always thinking of ways to expand the series around the world", including to "people who don't play games", he said. Tsujimoto and Tokuda did not comment on whether "Wilds" would be available for Nintendo's hotly-anticipated Switch 2 console, set for release later this year. But looking to the future, "we do still have plenty of monster ideas up our sleeves," Tokuda said. kf/tgb/rl
