Capcom talks about why Monster Hunter has become a worldwide success

A portion of a GamesBeat interview with Capcom's Peter Fabiano...

GamesBeat: Capcom is interesting because it has games that meet that mission of speaking a universal language. You have Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, games that are successful around the globe. But you also have many that are successful only in Japan. What does that bring to mind as far as how your strategy has to work when managing a workforce that’s based in Japan, but also spread across the world?

Fabiano: This is a difficult question to answer in just one phase. It depends on the genre of the game and what part of the game you’re looking at, what field. Take a more realistic-looking game, a Resident Evil. Obviously you’ll want that to look more realistic. It’s probably set in the United States, or a fictitious place like it, and so you’ll need talent from that local area, to get the feel of the cinematics right. Or maybe you can have a more Japanese, animated type of look. It depends on what the creators have in mind for the game.

If you’re looking at something more fantastical, like a Monster Hunter, in that case we have a lot of really epic entrances and cutscenes where the monsters appear. That’s distinctly made in Japan, but something about it works worldwide. It resonates because of the fact that it’s more fantastic. You can look at that from two different mindsets, depending on what part of your game you’re looking at and what type of game it is.