Want hardcore? Call Capcom

When designing games, game designers need to ensure that they are meeting player expectations, rather than their own. If a person has reached such a level that they’re a game industry professional, it’s fair to assume that you’ve played a lot of games, and are not on par with the average gamer. Variable to your level of cynicism, Capcom is either guilty of this and extremely lucky, or incredibly in tune with player wants; they are responsible for developing one of the most ‘hardcore’ games ever conceived – Monster Hunter.

The mechanics of Monster Hunter are both numerous, and hidden to players. The game expends little effort explaining the highly layered combat mechanic that governs gameplay. In essence, they have developed a game that allows the player community to develop theories regarding the hidden rules and mechanics based on their play experiences. As if letting players learn through trial and error made things challenging enough, Monster Hunter matches players up against dramatically more powerful foes; large monsters that can kill you in seconds, when killing them can take a full hour.

Rational thought would have you believe that this is simply too testing for players and that it would be a tremendous failure, though in a twist of events, just the opposite occurred. Monster Hunter quickly became highly successful – apparently offering players a level of depth and challenge that had been long desired. Capcom has since developed the franchise so extensively, that Monster Hunter Freedom United is the best selling UMD format game of all time, and Monster Hunter Tri was given exclusive rights by Nintendo to distribute the first recoloured Wii console, bundled with the game. Regardless of whether or not Capcom’s Monster Hunter was a fluke, the franchise’s continually growing popularity serves as a reminder to the games industry of the power of catering to player expectations.