Text/Yiguang Flow

01

The biggest winner of this year's Q1 is Capcom's new work "Monster Hunter: Wildland".

As we all know, on the third day after the release of this game on February 28, Capcom announced that its global sales exceeded 8 million units, which exceeded the previous 4 million units in the three days of "Monster Hunter Rise" and 5 million units in the first week of "Monster Hunter: World".

According to the calculation of 368 yuan of the national price, the global turnover of "Monster Hunter: Wildland" during this period exceeded 2.9 billion yuan, of course, the national price of this game is the third cheapest in the world, so the real turnover will only be higher.

Also on Steam, Monster Hunter: Wildlands set a record for the popularity of the Monster Hunt series with a peak of 1.38 million people online at the same time, and also made Steam set a record of 40 million people online at the same time. However, Monster Hunter: Wildlands currently has a mixed reputation, with a total of more than 167,000 reviews on Steam, and a positive rating of only 58%.

But no matter what, the hot sale of "Monster Hunter: Wildlands" still proves how terrifying a top game IP's ability to attract money is. Twenty years ago, Monster Hunter was just a new game that sold less than 300,000 units, and 20 years later (as of December 31, 2024), the cumulative sales of the Monster Hunter franchise have exceeded 108 million units.

02

After 2000, the Internet environment in Japan gradually developed, and online games also emerged. Therefore, Capcom also began to lay out online games, to be precise, it is to pay more attention to the way of "using the Internet to create game fun", during which there are three key projects within the company, one is a racing project, the second is a derivative of "Resident Evil", and the third is "Monster Hunter".

The name Monster Hunter started out as a development codename, monster, hunter, which sounds a bit brutal and seems to describe a bloody hunting game.

However, Fujioka, who was the director at the time, did not want the actions in the game to bring a sense of reality to the players, so he originally conceived a theme park similar to the "Mountain Hunter" manga. "Of course, the background of the world in this comic is also brutal, but the picture presented is more heartwarming and interesting. Monster Hunter is trying to convey a similar vibe. ”

At first, producer Tsuyoshi Tanaka wanted to make Monster Hunter an "online action game with the best graphics", but based on the conditions of online game production at the time, the production team decided that only large monsters needed network synchronization, so a new action project that allowed players to accurately control the character, support multiplayer cooperation, and defeat huge monsters was born.

After the project was established, "Monster Hunter" quickly determined the gameplay cycle of "hunting-materials-equipment": "Huge monsters will change and adapt to the environment, players need to cooperate to defeat huge monsters, and use the harvested monster materials for their own equipment." ”

Since the company's strategic goal is online games, Monster Hunter attaches great importance to the "anyone can participate" feature in the early days, but in terms of actual production, the game avoids the strong competition mechanism of traditional online games.

Fujioka recalls, "In the beginning, we learned about online games and created an exchange mechanism, thinking that both giving and receiving could be fun, but that was not the case. If competition is believed, then the player's energy will be used to belittle the opponent, even if the opponent's actions benefit everyone. ”

Therefore, in terms of actual production, compared with the sense of urgency and competition of online games, "Monster Hunter" focuses more on the fun of cooperation and the mechanism that cooperative participants can get random rewards, which not only bundles the interests of cooperative players, but also promotes invitation and socialization, ensuring that the game can reflect a unique sense of relaxation.

"You don't have to force all players to do the same thing, you just have to get something out of it." Fujioka would mention: "So we compressed the game time to almost 1 hour and 1 game, and the task that 4 friends can pass in a team can pass, and 3 is missing 1, so it is just right to maintain this relaxation." ”

In 2004, despite a lot of thought put into the game's production, Monster Hunter did not become a hit after its release, with total sales of only 288,000 units.

The reason for this is that, on the one hand, the game operation is complex and the threshold is high, and on the other hand, the console is also very energy-consuming to connect to the Internet. However, in a small number of core player circles, "Monster Hunter" still caused a boom, and once the number of registrations on KDDI's online battle platform increased significantly.

In the year that followed, Capcom released two spin-offs of Monster Hunter in a row, one is an increased and upgraded version of Monster Hunter G, and the other is a simplified ported version of Monster Hunter Pocket Edition (referred to as Monster Hunter P). Among them, the former has continued the popularity and reputation of the Monster Hunter series, and the latter has become the first step for this series to become popular because of its main PSP platform.

As Monster Hunter has grown in the core player base, more and more players are saying "I want to play with more people" and "I want to introduce Monster Hunter to more people". Therefore, with the idea of "creating an environment that is more convenient for players to spread the game", Capcom spent 8 months making "Monster Hunter P".

"Monster Hunter" is far less convenient to play online on the PS2 platform than PSP, the latter as long as you download the game, you can connect with friends anytime and anywhere, and at the same time, "Monster Hunter P" has a certain degree of simplified operation, enhanced weapon attacks, weakened monster health, and offline all-access missions, all of which make this game more spreadable.

As a result, "Monster Hunter P" has been making progress for the next two years, and finally became a masterpiece with global sales exceeding 1.3 million.

03

After the release of Monster Hunter, Capcom quickly entered the development of Monster Hunter 2.

But the game was very controversial after its launch, on the one hand, it was too radical and made players miserable, and on the other hand, it found a new way for later series to have a far-reaching impact.

Tsuyoshi Tanaka, who was the producer at the time, had the idea: "Go back to the starting point of creating Monster Hunter at the beginning, and rediscover what the production team wanted to convey with Monster Hunter." "In terms of production strategy, Monster Hunter 2 has added a lot of new content: 20 new monsters, large and small, a large number of new weapons at once, the setting of the day and night season for the first time, new sub-quest mechanics, and more challenging ancient dragons, etc.

A large number of new content brings a lot of new ideas, such as weapon design emphasizes personalization, the new knives, hunting flutes, guns, bows and arrows are differentiated enough, and the original weapons are also designed with new actions. Another example is the diurnal change and the breeding season, warm season, cold season and other elements, which led to the route of building an environmental ecology in the Monster Hunter series, and expanded a complete development idea.

But at the same time, too much new content, the problem is that the balance is difficult to adjust, the most obvious problem is that some monsters are very difficult to defeat, especially the ancient dragon, such as the wind set off by the steel dragon under the effect of the weather system, so that the player has no chance to output. In addition, "Monster Hunter 2" also has problems such as infinite refresh of mobs and inconsistent weapon types.

After the game's release in 2007, the response to the new additions was really good, but the balance issues also tortured players to death, and eventually Monster Hunter 2 sold 692,000 units. Producer Tsuyoshi Tanaka also resigned due to the failure of "Monster Hunter 2", and then Ryozo Tsujimoto, who participated in the development of "Monster Hunter P", took the position and became the helm of the Monster Hunter series.

However, the failure of Monster Hunter 2 made Monster Hunter P 2nd take off. This new work, which also focuses on the PSP platform, does not adopt the simple porting strategy of "Monster Hunter P", but according to the problems encountered in "Monster Hunter 2", the difficulty has been reduced, the map has been optimized, the balance has been optimized, the loading speed has been improved, and the bugs of infinite farming mobs and new weapons have been fixed, and a lot of new content has been added before it is officially released.

In the end, Monster Hunter P 2nd sold more than 2.4 million units worldwide, more than three times the size of its prototype Monster Hunter 2.

At the same time, starting with Monster Hunter P 2nd, the series is on the fast track. As the PSP version changed the decline of "Monster Hunter 2" and exceeded one million sales soon after its release, Capcom also began to actively market, expanding the series from niche to mass.

First of all, Capcom will actively promote the self-propagation of players with offline communication meetings; Secondly, the official set up in-game scenes offline to promote the craze of the Holy Land Tour; Then, use sales celebrations, support stores, magazines and other channels to maintain brand exposure; Finally, the low-cost version will be launched in a timely manner to deeply cover console and handheld game users.

After this set of combination punches, "Monster Hunter" has gradually completed the identity transformation of the niche → the public. Capcom once revealed that it can be clearly seen that in some stores, the number of pre-orders and sales of the game is "4 sets and 4 sets are rising", and at the same time, the sales of "Monster Hunter P 2nd G PSP the Best" exceeded one million, becoming a rare case of a cheap version being sold out.

04

At the beginning of the production of Monster Hunter 3 in 2007, director Fujioka and producer Ryozo Tsujimoto realized that if they continued the way they had done before, the game would have very little room for expansion. So they plan to rebuild the game's world on the one hand, and make changes with the iteration of the hardware on the other.

Left: Director Fujioka Right: Producer Ryozo Tsujimoto

However, the core of the Monster Hunter series is to carry out missions and hunt monsters, and even if it is reconstructed, it cannot break this infrastructure, so Fujioka will focus on the question of "what is the existence of hunters and villagers based on". The obvious answer is "ecology".

"Since we can't change the hunt, we focus on how to express more interesting details from another angle, such as more realistic details, smoother movements, and what kind of incremental information can be obtained when the hunter takes a closer look at the monster." Fujioka thinks that the process of "searching" and "discovering" is an element that has been easily overlooked in the past.

The element that best exemplifies this design idea is the underwater scene in the game. "What monsters are there at the bottom of the sea? How do hunters fight underwater? How do you deal with the oppressive feeling of diving scenes? What are the wonders underwater? It's obviously fun to incorporate these elements into the world of Monster Hunter. "Fujioka is going to build an underwater monster ecology for this.

In 2009, "Monster Hunter 3" was released, but this new work did not choose the PS platform, but switched to Wii U, but at that time, Wii U also faced sales difficulties, and in the end, "Monster Hunter 3" pulled a Wii U, so the sales of "Monster Hunter 3" were not high, and the sales exceeded 1 million sets in the past 1 year, with a total of 1.9 million sets worldwide.

Later, at the end of 2010, Capcom launched a new PSP platform "Monster Hunter P 3rd" based on "Monster Hunter 3" and "Monster Hunter P 2nd", which has reached a record high of 4.9 million sales due to its previous reputation on the PSP platform.

But sadly, Capcom launched a new 3DS/Wii U platform based on "Monster Hunter 3" at the end of 2011 "Monster Hunter 3G", with sales of 2.6 million and 690,000 on the two platforms respectively, which is much inferior to "Monster Hunter P 3rd", and the later launch of "Monster Hunter 3G HD Version" has not been able to recover the decline.

Fortunately, "Monster Hunter 4" reversed this decline. In order to continue to add new basic content, Monster Hunter 4 proposes a new concept called "height difference". Ryozo Tsujimoto observed, "If you play too much, you will find that the experience of Monster Hunter will be repetitive and the player's excitement will be reduced, so we thought of strengthening the movements, and compared to previous works, what is missing in our movements is the elements that are not in the plane." ”

Fujioka wants to expand on this idea further: "At the beginning we wanted to create a mechanic that ran on the terrain without stress, allowing the player to jump over a step without tripping. And being able to jump will be associated with jumping attacks, and if there is a jump attack, there will be air stagnation and follow-up operations, so we added these elements to add another riding state. ”

Starting from "Monster Hunter 4", this series also pays more attention to the polishing of music and story, and gradually improves the quality of all-round products, after the game was released on the 3DS platform in 2013, it sold 1.7 million units in two days, surpassing the previous record of 1.95 million units in five days of "Monster Hunter P 3rd", and the final total sales also reached 4.1 million units. In addition, Monster Hunter 4G (3DS), which was released in 2014, also sold 4.2 million units.

05

At this point, the Monster Hunter series has completely opened up the situation and formed a complete and reusable and cost-effective way of playing.

Specifically, the core gameplay of the series is a cycle of "hunting-material-equipment", and each new generation of the main game will conceive a new blockbuster element as the main content to attract attention.

Then, around the main work, the series will launch an increased amount of "G" version to maintain popularity and continue to generate revenue, and then expand the portable version and cheap version to increase the audience. At the same time, it is guaranteed that each game has something new than the previous one, whether it is new maps, weapons, monsters, equipment, or stories, music, and assistant functions.

After the success of Monster Hunter 4G, Capcom also saw more opportunities, especially the potential of the global market. Therefore, the Monster Hunter series also tries to go two ways, one is to continue to follow the 3DS platform and maintain the update frequency of new works, and the other is to concentrate resources and try to make a global masterpiece that is in line with the current trend.

The results of the first line are remarkable, with the experience and methodology precipitated before, as well as the accumulation of previous generations of products in the 3DS, "Monster Hunter X" and "Monster Hunter XX" achieved sales of 4.3 million and 4.6 million units respectively, and the latter successfully opened the market of NS. At the same time, the Monster Hunter production team is also accumulating strength.

At this time, nine years have passed since the release of the original Monster Hunter, and Ryozo Tsujimoto also had the idea of revisiting the Monster Hunter series: "The Monster Hunter series has been developed long enough, and looking back, I realize that there are many things that can be expressed, such as about the monster ecology, which I have been thinking about for a long time. ”

At the same time, they also wanted to expand the competitiveness of the Monster Hunter series in the global market, so they chose the subtitle and core concept of "World". So combined with the idea of returning to the essence of Monster Hunter, making a high-quality, rigorous ecosystem, and seamless world of Monster Hunter has become the goal of all members.

To this end, the Monster Hunter production team recruited a lot of young members, and the total number of people in the entire team was 200 at its peak. Ryozo Tsujimoto said, "There are a lot of things in this project that we tried for the first time, so we estimate that there will be a lot of factors during development that cannot be measured by existing standards. So, from the team building stage, we want to build a team that can run all the way to the finish line without breaking down. ”

The development process of Monster Hunter: World is also the stage where Capcom is polishing its next-generation engine, MT Framework. Fujioka recalls, "In the process of translating the game's monster and scene concepts into CG, there were many things that could not be achieved without improving the development engine. For example, the light transparency treatment of monster wings and vegetation, the texture of skin, and so on. ”

Fortunately, Capcom's internal support for Monster Hunter: World is full, and there is a technical team that communicates with the development team from start to finish and adjusts the engine features. "Having an in-house engine means having a dedicated in-house programmer, which is a huge advantage." Ryozo Tsujimoto was also very happy.

In this R&D environment, Monster Hunter: World is also gradually taking shape. It's not technically an open-world game, but it has a seamless large map that's 2.5 times larger than its predecessor in the series, where each monster has its own habitat and will follow a certain ecological logic to act in it.

However, open-world games are not a new concept, and the key lies in how Monster Hunter makes its own identity. Hiroshi Tokuda, who is a first-time game director, also believes that "Monster Hunter is a game that requires multiple entries into the same realm to complete missions, so 'high-density maps that can discover something new every time you take a step forward' is the most suitable design for Monster Hunter." ”

As a result, Monster Hunter World's strategy was a leapfrog success, with the game selling more than 5 million units within three days of its release in early 2018, not only selling out offline stores in Japan, but also driving sales growth on the PS4 console. To date, the game has sold 28.1 million units worldwide, and its expansion, Monster Hunter: Iceborne, has sold 14.9 million units.

06

After the success of Monster Hunter: World, the general trend of the Monster Hunter series took shape. In the past, the series had few opponents, and even if there were opponents in the future, it would not be able to keep up with its snowballing speed.

For example, the monster design experience accumulated by Monster Hunter can be disassembled and imitated by others at best, but it cannot form the brand recognition unique to Monster Hunter; The polishing and details of the ecological chain in Monster Hunter are more difficult for others to imitate. On this basis, each new generation of Monster Hunter will also add to the accumulation of the past, which will make the later ones even more out of reach.

So at this stage, the most critical thing for the Monster Hunter series to do is to seek breakthroughs and innovations, and make the core "new elements" of the previous methodology brilliant. The rest of the work is to keep up with the iteration of technology and improve the quality of the product in an all-round way.

Monster Hunter Rise is a prime example. After the production of "Monster Hunter X", producer Ryozo Tsujimoto and director Yasunori Ichinose plan to make a new "Monster Hunter" for NS, which is different from "Monster Hunter: World", this new work emphasizes more handheld online rather than console networking, so this work emphasizes portability, and at the same time, for the Japanese market, the game replaces monsters with monsters, and emphasizes the Japanese world view.

Continuing the characteristics of Monster Hunter X, this game further strengthens the game's action experience, focusing on the mobility and fluidity of the xyz axis, with the ultimate goal of allowing players to crusade monsters more freely. At the same time, with the iteration of engine technology, "Monster Hunter Rise" also tries to package the game in a more comprehensive way like "Monster Hunter: World", so you can see that the Japanese world view that the production team wants to emphasize can be seen everywhere in the game.

The twin kanban girls who are out of the circle in "Monster Hunter: Rise".

It has to be said that the attempt of "Monster Hunter Rise" has been very successful, and the game has sold more than 4 million units in the first three days since its release in 2021, and the total sales so far have also reached 16.7 million units. Its expansion, Monster Hunter: Dawn, has also sold 9.4 million units to date.

and "Monster Hunter: Wildlands", which was released not long ago, excluding Ice Plains and Dawn, this is the third next-generation work. Without the feeling of returning to the original point for the first time, and without the freshness of boldly breaking through the world view style, the challenge of this new work is undoubtedly "whether it can successfully take the next step of the Monster Hunter series in the new era".

From a development point of view, Ryozo Tsujimoto's goal is naturally very high, with the theme of "wilderness", expanding the "natural disaster" attribute of monsters, trying to build a more realistic and complex large world, and in doing so, hitting the pinnacle of the series. Judging from the test feedback from players, despite a lot of optimization and detail problems, most people still shouted "I didn't play enough" and "I can't play", which made the game test have to be postponed.

Of course, the actual performance of the game was also presented to players along with the release, with 8 million sets in 3 days, nearly 3 billion yuan of absorption capacity, and 160,000 reviews with a praise rate of only 58%, which is the most real side of "Monster Hunter: Wildlands" now. But it can't be ignored that this series has always liked to be constantly updated and iterated, and how high it can reach in the end depends on its subsequent series of countermeasures, as well as the sincerity it can show.

Looking back, Capcom spent 20 years starting with a "fight" gameplay, first gathering a group of core players; Then, through small step iterations, each generation of Zhengzuo proposes a main element, and at the same time increases the content and improves the quality little by little; Then, through the incremental version and the cheap version, you can eat through every player you can reach; In the end, the Monster Hunter series was gradually raised out of the circle.

In the past 20 years, Monster Hunter has launched more than 20 derivative games, running fast at an average rate of one new game a year, often as soon as the previous game is completed, the next project will start to advance, and there are also derivative works developed in parallel. This kind of non-stop research and development and iteration has finally cultivated "Monster Hunter" to a height that few people have reached.

Now look at Monster Hunter's achievements in the past 20 years: it is the benchmark for action games, carrying forward the "fight" gameplay; It is a true normal tree that spans hardware generations, geographies, and player groups; It is a model of the coexistence of hardcore and inclusiveness in the global game industrialization wave.

It has created so much incredible, not at the top of its debut, but always climbing to higher peaks.

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