Take away the glamor that’s often associated with it and video game developers have a very tough job. There aren’t many fields where you can invest millions of dollars and several years creating something only to have people shit on it the moment it’s released to the world. I’ll spend a few hours on an article and get bummed when it flops; I can’t imagine how the folks at Naughty Dog felt when they were deep into realizing The Last of Us with no real idea of how it would be received.
Naughty Dog has been more consistent than most in delivering visually stunning, story-driven games with memorable characters and rewarding gameplay. A post-apocalyptic survival game with their uniquely cinematic flair and attention to detail would almost certainly be a success, right?
“Quite the opposite,” revealed co-director Bruce Straley in a recent round table discussion with several of the game’s creators. “We thought it was going to tank.”
“The joke we would say throughout production was that ‘This game is the downfall of Naughty Dog,'” added creative director Neil Druckmann. The team was so worried about how the world would react to The Last of Us that some thought it might ruin their well-deserved reputation as one of the industry’s most respected developers.
Surprisingly, the source of their worries didn’t have much to do with the idea that they might let down fans who have come to expect great things from them, or the hype that Sony spent considerable time building leading up to its release. Instead, it had a lot to do with the challenge of making its many systems work well together.
“A big part of it was on the mechanical side,” explained lead level designer Anthony Newman. “It wasn’t coming together. So it was really a a set of really lucky breaks in terms of gameplay decisions we made that really made everything fall into place and turned it into a fun game.”
The realization that they might have something special on their hands didn’t come until development was wrapping up, some time before it would become unofficial bookend release for the PS3, inspire a live-action movie, possible sequel and PS4 remaster.
