Capcom didn’t need to resort to Dr Faustus levels of farming to get their profit from their latest game thanks to a recent windfall.

During a Devil May Cry 5 panel featuring director Hideaki Itsuno, producer Matt Walker, and senior producer Mitcheru Okabe at GDC 2019, the three of them talked about game design by reverse-engineering emotions. Oh, and also mention the fact that they’ve sold 2 million copies of DMC5 at this point in typing.

DMCV has sold 2 million copies #gdc219 pic.twitter.com/ZOfbFNBoTH

— Isaac Torres ?? (@Delriach) March 22, 2019

The trio also dressed up as Nero, V, and Dante respectively (via Kotaku). Cute.

There’s quite a bit of spoiler material past this point, so I’ll put this up in case:

The talk itself is about what’s necessary for game designers and how they shouldn’t mix up “means” and “objectives”, but instead figure out many different means to solve a game design/mechanic objective (via 4gamer).

The trio also touched upon Hero’s Journey-type arcs, where the hero Nero had to experience setbacks so that his awakening/comeback is stronger and resonates better with players.

You can check out the full recap at 4Gamer; it’s quite a read. 

As I’ve mentioned before, Capcom is truly on a roll this 2019 just because of DMC5 and Resident Evil 2, which I should remind you are single-player games without any need for live services and online play (barring leaderboards and score-keeping stuff for bragging rights). Hopefully this recent development can inspire other bigwig companies to steer their development ship towards this direction.