Video games: the reasons for the success of "Monster Hunter"

Mutual aid, gigantic creatures and oversized swords: the Monster Hunter video game saga is preparing to release its wild beasts on Friday, February 28, and its creators have entrusted some elements of the recipe having made it a "global blockbuster."

For over 20 years, this series has offered the opportunity to play as monster hunters in a fantasy universe populated in particular by dragons and Monster Hunter Wilds , marketed on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series, is no exception. As in previous installments, players are encouraged to fight together to defeat the most tenacious opponents.

"We will never abandon this cooperative action game aspect," emphasizes Yuya Tokuda, the game's director. "It's really the DNA of our series." Long lines at trade shows to try out the game, record attendance at an online test weekend in October... Seven years after Monster Hunter World , the last major episode in the saga, the wait is particularly visible among fans.

"It doesn't put any pressure on us," smiles Ryozo Tsujimoto, fifty years old, historical producer of the series passing through Europe a few weeks before the release. On the contrary , "it's an important piece of data, which allows us to see the trends and reactions of the players" and "the things to improve" afterwards, emphasizes Tsujimoto.

For this new installment, the game director promises "an even smoother experience", with no loading times between the players' base camp and the open world populated by creatures. "Being able to integrate even more monsters that evolve all around the players" was "a programming challenge" , confides Yuya Tokuda.

The stakes are high: with more than 108 million copies sold since the first episode released in 2004 on PlayStation 2, Monster Hunter is the other flagship series of the Japanese publisher Capcom, alongside Resident Evil and its zombies.

"Initially, we didn't have a development schedule that would allow us to release the game worldwide on the same day," explains Yuya Tsujimoto, particularly because of the translation into different languages.

Therefore, "not only did (Western) players receive the game later, but all the information about its content was already known," he explains, which pushed the studio to organize itself to ensure a global release, which has now become the norm in the sector.

The democratization of online gaming and the ability to find partners around the world have also served to expand the audience with each episode, "which has allowed us to move beyond our niche status in the West to become a global blockbuster," says the producer, to the point that the series now has more players outside of Japan.

But the appetite of the creators of Monster Hunter Wilds is now pushing them to hunt new fans, beyond the video game. "There are still people who don't know" the series, notes Ryozo Tsujimoto. " Our challenge is to reach even more people."

A first film, released in 2020, however missed its target, failing to attract either the public or the critics. Not enough to discourage the producer of the saga, who affirms that its variation on other media "is something that is still on the table". "This does not mean that we are considering a particular release at the moment", he nevertheless tempers.

While they remain discreet about the future, and in particular a possible arrival of Monster Hunter Wilds on the future Switch 2 from Nintendo, expected in 2025, its creators are already working on additions. "We still have plenty of monster ideas up our sleeves," smiles Yuya Tokuda.