In a recent interview, naughty dogs co-president and last survivor Director Neil Druckmann explains why the studio hasn’t revealed its next game yet.
Speaking to ComicBook about HBO’s upcoming live-action The Last of Us, Druckmann talked about how Naughty Dog announced some games prematurely. “You’re right, we did pre-announce Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us Part 2, but that actually led to work-life balance issues that we sometimes have at the studio,” Druckmann told ComicBook.
“By delaying the announcement a little bit, we can think more about the timeline and we now have a better idea of how we’re going to approach production. So here’s our [The Last of Us] The multiplayer project, there’s another project that I won’t talk about, but we’re really excited about that as well. ”
The Last of Us Part 1 was revealed at last year’s Summer Game Festival and released a few months later, which does indeed fit what Druckmann is saying here. But inappropriate is Druckmann’s downplay of the “work-life balance problem” the studio faces.
In 2020, an exhaustive report from Kotaku detailed allegedly sometimes very egregious overtime at studios, mostly to create an atmosphere that suggested you had to get work done anyway. At the time of the report, around 70% of non-lead designers had left the studio, along with a significant number of artists, along with some less experienced staff to work on The Last of Us Part 2, which allegedly made the situation It got worse. The sequel also received a three-month delay a month after its initial release date was announced, which supposedly meant another three months of overtime added to the months already happening.
Hopefully, Druckmann’s eccentric and condescending comments actually mean things have or are changing at Naughty Dog, but it doesn’t paint a particularly favorable picture for the director.
