In an internal interview conducted at Capcom, Monster Hunter series producer Ryozo Tsujimoto (above) comments on the size of the development team that worked on the latest game in the series, Monster Hunter 4.
“It was tough dealing with the concept of tweaking the action system,” Tsujimoto says with regard to the challenges the development team faced during production. “Likewise, this time around we had a lot more people working on the game, so I felt this increase in staff made it difficult to share information and communicate effectively within each team.”
When asked how many people worked on Monster Hunter 4, Tsujimoto replies, “The number of people involved often varies with each project, but I’d say there was a few hundred people who worked on MH4 in total.”
It’s interesting to know that the size of the development team for Monster Hunter 4 was as large as it was. Typically, portable games employ smaller development teams, but given the multiplayer-oriented nature of Monster Hunter, the amount of content in the games, and the need to balance so many different aspects of them, it isn’t such a surprise that a larger team would be required to produce a well-rounded product.
For reference, despite being a game with high-definition visuals, DmC Devil May Cry had a development team of “over 90 members”. The fact that DmC is a single-player game probably contributes to that fact. Meanwhile, Resident Evil 6 had a development staff of over 600 people.
Monster Hunter 4 was released for the Nintendo 3DS in Japan earlier this month. The game has sold close to 2.2 million copies at retail so far.
Image courtesy Capcom.
