Naughty Dog has stopped development on The Last of Us Online. Also an image showing The Last of Us Online’s menu leak

[DForce]

Changing argument I see. You guys claim parallel development and that one game doesn't affect the other and act as if Naughty Dogs can release that failed GaaS and still release another single-player game the year after. Our argument from the beginning was that if Naughty Dogs work on the GaaS then we won't see their Single-player game before 2027. Now, we won't get the GaaS and the next single-player will not come before 2027. Jim and Hulst did really fuck it up for us.

No argument changed. Yurinka replied to you and said Naughty Dog is working on more than one project. You responded by saying, "You still talking about the imaginary super teams and gazillion parallel projects." We didn't use the word parallel, you did. I told you they have been working on multiple projects for years.

Who said they would release another single-player game in the same year?

You're putting words in our mouths.

It's a known fact they were working on multiple games and you have no idea what their target release dates are.

 

[Yurinka]

2022
June 9th - Neil Duckmann said we would hear more about The Last of Us Online in 2023.
July 15th - Bungie deal officially closes.

2023
May 12th - Deviation Games hit with layoffs.
May 24th - Reports of Jim Ryan using Bungie to "rigorously vet its upcoming live service games."
May 26th - Naughty Dog reports the game is delayed. Jason Schreier reports most of the team has moved on to other projects.
Oct 2023 - Game put on ice. Reported layoffs.

It's possible the vetting process happened early in the year because I don't think they would just layoff people immediately.

Jason Blundell left Deviation Games in September 2022 and maybe that was related to the Bungie evaluation.

According to Sony there is no vetting process or game evaluations from Bungie, Bungie has absolutely nothing to do with PS Studios delaying, cancelling or firing people, or greenlighting games.

These things are made only inside these specific studios and the PS Studios editorial team, where Bungie isn't included because they are not part of PS Studios.

I posted here countless times the image from the Sony document where they explain Bungie's integration inside SIE, explaining the SIE Live Service Center of Excellence.

That center has members from SIE plublishing, PS Studios and Bungie (SO NOT ONLY BUNGIE) and they only overview and review different GaaS specific areas only and provide expert guidance in these areass (SO THIS TEAM DOES NOT ANALIZE THE WHOLE GAME, AND EVEN LESS DECIDES TO CANCEL OR DELAY THEM) to all SIE GaaS (which also includes the Bungie games, and doesn't include non-GaaS games).

 

[Kokoloko]

I was looking forward to an online TLOU game with coop and story elements. Seeing TLOU from another perspective, other parts of the USa and with lots of on going stories and gameplay. This sucks, what a waste

 

[Petekilla]

Pauly Tassi again with his B.S. Sony never forced ND to do this. This was something ND wanted to do, and when they found out they couldn’t do it, they course corrected.

 

[Petekilla]

There is some incompetency happening at Sony and I Blame upper management. Tlou mp and any other Uncharted mp have been successful so not taking advantage of that is asinine. You make a survey asking about a ND BR or mp component for tlou and it'll be a resounding "yes, please let's get one" Scrapping years of this work is fucking crazy and incompetent asf. You could release whatever tf thy have now and it'll sell and ppl would love it.

Not the first time they did it. SSM as I’m sure you know scrapped a space game that was well into development. As Jason Schreier said, these things happen all the time.

 

[Petekilla]

Changing argument I see. You guys claim parallel development and that one game doesn't affect the other and act as if Naughty Dogs can release that failed GaaS and still release another single-player game the year after. Our argument from the beginning was that if Naughty Dogs work on the GaaS then we won't see their Single-player game before 2027. Now, we won't get the GaaS and the next single-player will not come before 2027. Jim and Hulst did really fuck it up for us.

Once again. Jim and Hulst were not in charge when ND decided to make this into a separate full blown MP. ND decided to do this. Blame Neil. He wanted to fully focus on TLOU 2 SP, then worry about the MP later.

 

[Darth Vader]

Once again. Jim and Hulst were not in charge when ND decided to make this into a separate full blown MP. ND decided to do this. Blame Neil. He wanted to fully focus on TLOU 2 SP, then worry about the MP later.

Neil was not the director for the online portion of the game.

 

[ksdixon]

I still say it's all bs for the following reasons:

• Factions 1 as it exists now, has levels missing as MP maps from across the main game (hotel upper floors/basement, Firefly hospital etc) and Left Behind DLC. If you wanted to turn Factions 2.0 into something like RE Mercenaries/Raid mode, you could chuck-in TLOU2 levels too, and use the as-is Factions Online assets for San Francisco map(s) too. But if we take the idea that for some quick tidy-up work they can salvage some work and do a lost levels gimmick, they could even revisit old MP levels and, say, do an expanded Beach level and an expanded Sewer level (still keeping the combined beach+sewers level for prosperity). It's mostly asset reuse from prior MP levels or the in-game stages. Easy work.
• Downtown was a hated map at first, at night time. They relit the map into a lighter stage. All maps should have day/night variants.
• Each map should have a timed or interactable element, like fog rolling in on The Dam level. Time/progress released Infected onto the 4v4 battlefield in other new game modes. They've had AI vs NPC AI since at least Left Behind DLC, and that was flipping ages ago.
• We bought MTX. cosmetics, taunts, special kill animations, clothing, new maps, new skills, new weapons, all that shit. What is all the hubbub about Bungie reviewing things and saying it would struggle to monetize mtx. It's Bungie whom are struggling to make their money and manage themselves. I think they will be looked at as Jim's albatross moment, if his stupid quotes weren't already out there.
• In any state, Factions 1 should have released as a a standlone game. Especially afterwards, some time in the last 10 odd years. Having to keep the entire PS4 remastered game installed just for the MP is rediculous. With some marketing and push, Sony could quite happily run tournaments and stuff through Factions and start cultivating the idea of exclusive game exports/tourneys, and piggy back that to push more social media engagement/advertisement.
• Not bringing MP forward for TLOU P1 (and UC remasters/collections), and shutting down their PS3 servers is inept of Sony. The grass isn't greener on the otherside, following MS into GAAS and Subscriptions, the grass is greener where you water it.

I guess I'll continue when I'm less mad...

 

[KnittedKnight]

Failure of leadership all around at each part of the ladder, beyond the studio as well - no matter what spin is put to it. Happens, clearly to the best of them even.

 

[Gamernyc78]

 

[Johnic]

Yes but the problem is they should have known that when they started. They had to have planned ahead. Why is it that 4 years in they started thinking about resource management?

 

[Gamernyc78]

Yes but the problem is they should have known that when they started. They had to have planned ahead. Why is it that 4 years in they started thinking about resource management?

Yeah I don't think tht was the issue. I think in the end alot of ppl specifically had diff of opinions. They are idiots all they had to do was expand on what they did with first mp and have a Roadmap of updates and things to add. Their ambition and (if true) giving a fuck about what Bungie thought and having to defer to them screwed all this shit up!

 

[KiryuRealty]

I have heard from an insider at Naughty Dog.

Their plan now is to pivot, moving from software development to sex toy manufacturing, adding an "n" to the studio name.

 

[Johnic]

I have heard from an insider at Naughty Dog.

Their plan now is to pivot, moving from software development to sex toy manufacturing, adding an "n" to the studio name.

 

[Yurinka]

Yes but the problem is they should have known that when they started. They had to have planned ahead. Why is it that 4 years in they started thinking about resource management?

In game development very frequently things on paper sound great, but when starting to implement them you see that certain things don't work or perform in the game as it was estimated, and should be improved or changed by other ones that as seen in other games or in internal prototyping work better.

Or there are things that did work when you started to develop the game but years later the market changes and players no longer like one thing that gets outdated and prefer something else new that appeared on similar new games. So in mid development important changes are made to adapt the game to the modern market tastes and trends.

Sometimes these changes are relatively small and don't require extra development time or resources. Sometimes they require a lot of extra time or even reboot important parts of the project, causing delays or to require more manpower.

In game production, quite often at the start of the project they add 50% on top of the initially estimated development time to the time they estimated that will take to make the project to consider all these unexpected changes.

One thing it may have happened looking at what ND said, the timing of the delay, the cancellation and the SIE Center of Live Service Excellence creation is that maybe they had planned the project properly, but in a review of the project by the center or in playtests once the game was developed enough to make them, they highlighted that this project didn't have a big enough post launch content schedule or budget to be successful in the long term.

As a result ND would have delayed the game to review this post launch part of the project, and after analizing and planning it properly found out that it would take them more post launch resources than ND wanted, but even considering future headcount growth they wouldn't have enough headcount to also work in the SP projects they wanted. Having to choose between the MP game and SP games, ND prefered to kill the MP game and focus on SP games instead.

People with a lot of talent and experience are still humans, so sometimes they make mistakes too. They make have a lot of knowledge in some areas, but not in other ones.

 

[anonpuffs]

Lmao thinking ND average salary is 50k is wild. More like 200k

 

[DForce]

According to Sony there is no vetting process or game evaluations from Bungie, Bungie has absolutely nothing to do with PS Studios delaying, cancelling or firing people, or greenlighting games.

These things are made only inside these specific studios and the PS Studios editorial team, where Bungie isn't included because they are not part of PS Studios.

I posted here countless times the image from the Sony document where they explain Bungie's integration inside SIE, explaining the SIE Live Service Center of Excellence.

That center has members from SIE plublishing, PS Studios and Bungie (SO NOT ONLY BUNGIE) and they only overview and review different GaaS specific areas only and provide expert guidance in these areass (SO THIS TEAM DOES NOT ANALIZE THE WHOLE GAME, AND EVEN LESS DECIDES TO CANCEL OR DELAY THEM) to all SIE GaaS (which also includes the Bungie games, and doesn't include non-GaaS games).

They don't have anything to do with delaying, canceling, greenlighting, or firing people, but Jason's report about the vetting (critical examination) of the game lines up with what has been going on with the Factions multiplayer.

They didn't decide what happened with the project, but they reportedly had concerns about the longevity of the game. After this report, the development team dwindled until it was officially canceled a few days ago.

The statement about Naughty Dog also lines up with what was reported back in May. Naughty Dog would have to become a live service studio to support the game long-term, and that makes me believe the reports about the longevity of the game were accurate.

 

[anonpuffs]

They don't have anything to do with delaying, canceling, greenlighting, or firing people, but Jason's report about the vetting (critical examination) of the game lines up with what has been going on with the Factions multiplayer.

They didn't decide what happened with the project, but they reportedly had concerns about the longevity of the game. After this report, the development team dwindled until it was officially canceled a few days ago.

The statement about Naughty Dog also lines up with what was reported back in May. Naughty Dog would have to become a live service studio to support the game long-term, and that makes me believe the reports about the longevity of the game were accurate.

My guess is naughty dog made a huge map with super high quality and thought it was amazing, and then bungie came in was like "that's great. But where's the other 6 maps? And where's the plan to release a new map every 3 months?"

 

[Zzero]

Lmao thinking ND average salary is 50k is wild. More like 200k

What? I cannot believe this, especially if you are using median instead of mean, which is a lot more logical in a case like this.

 

[Gamernyc78]

My guess is naughty dog made a huge map with super high quality and thought it was amazing, and then bungie came in was like "that's great. But where's the other 6 maps? And where's the plan to release a new map every 3 months?"

Didn't even have to be a new map every few months just diff events. Fortnite sometimes doesn't change their maps for more than half a year. This shit isn't rocket science, I'm so mad this shit got canceled. At least they should salvage the assets and time theyboutvin and give us some firm of mp!