The director of Monster Hunter Wilds was sneaking around the beta: "There are players out there who'd have no idea to this day that they were actually playing with the director"

A Monster Hunter Wilds character holding binoculars.
(Image credit: Capcom)

You better be on your best behavior when playing the second Monster Hunter Wilds beta this weekend, as you may just find yourself in the company of the game's director.

Speaking to GamesRadar+ about how much the devs watch or play the beta, Monster Hunter Wilds director Yuya Tokuda says, "A lot," actually. Tokuda shares that the Wilds team spends a lot of time reviewing people's beta streams and videos to "see feedback that we can't really get internally" – something the chief designer of the Lance found useful especially.

"I would go online and put an SOS flare up, and that would mean that a couple of players would join my party, and that gives me a chance to see – whenever staff play the game at the company together, there's a certain amount of 'we all know the game inside out' – getting a chance to see real players on how they react to the content is really important to me, to understand if it's working or not. That was a great opportunity for me as well."

Iain Harris
News Editor, Games

I joined GamesRadar+ in May 2022 following stints at PCGamesN and PocketGamer.Biz, with some freelance for Kotaku UK, RockPaperShotgun, and VG24/7 thrown in for good measure. When I'm not running the news team on the games side, you'll find me putting News Editor duties to one side to play the hottest JRPG of 20 years ago or pillaging the depths of Final Fantasy 14 for a swanky new cloak – the more colourful, the better.