A lot of the problems seemed to have come up when Druckmann took over after Uncharted 4. It's obvious he would rather be a movie director (he reminds me of Kojima).
Naughty Dog won't be discussing any future game or TV show at the TLOU Day (Outbreak Day) tomorrow (Sept 26.)
- Thread starter Gamernyc78
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A lot of the problems seemed to have come up when Druckmann took over after Uncharted 4. It's obvious he would rather be a movie director (he reminds me of Kojima).
Every generation the games take longer to be developed for all AAA teams, not only ND. Druckmann has nothing to do with this.
Well, Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin did not develop a single game after leaving ND.
After leaving ND Gavin cofounded a websites related startup, then in 2009 created a company to make this Flash game for browsers and phones and he moved away to write novels.
Jason Rubin left ND to join a struggling THQ, which filed for bankrupcy some time later. In 2014 he joined Oculus to handle its 1st party games and he is now the VP of Metaverse Content at Meta/Facebook.
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What about our boys over at Insomniac? Look at how great their output is
Until very recently studios like SSM, Bend or ND worked in a single big game at the same time. Insomniac had 2 offices and a total number of way more workers than the other studios, which allowed them to work in 3-4 big games at the same time instead.
Spider-Man 2 is going to take around 5 years, it's being developed by the Spider-Man 1 team. Wolverine is being developed by the Miles Morales team. Rift Apart was developed by another team and they also had people who made MP/VR/AR stuff. This doesn't mean they are completely separated teams, they help each other when needed, but the key is that they had more people so were able to work in more games.
A few years ago Jimbo and Hermen decided to highly grow the ND, SSM, Guerrilla, Bend and the rest of their teams to also allow them to work on multiple big games. So in the future they'll have a similar output to Insomniac. Obviously to build entire new AAA teams, to change the workflow to handle multiple tracks at the same time, and to develop AAA games requires years and Jimbo & Hermen got their position barely 4 years ago, so pretty likely we won't see the results of this growth until the 2nd half or the end of the generation.
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OP
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The multiple teams between ND, Santa Monica and other first parties working on multiple projects, etc was done years ago way before four years. It's been more than a decade. I remember all the growth and talk years ago.
Naughty Dog Officially Split Into Two Teams - IGN
Naughty Dog, the Sony-owned studio behind Uncharted and The Last of Us, has been split into two internal teams working on separate projects.
ND tried it back then with U3+TLOU, but weren't able to keep two big full productions at the same time, so decided to focus again on a single big project at the same time again after the U3+TLOU: https://www.videogameschronicle.com...ll-struggling-with-multi-project-development/The multiple teams between ND, Santa Monica and other first parties working on multiple projects, etc was done years ago way before four years. It's been more than a decade. I remember all the growth and talk years ago.
Naughty Dog Officially Split Into Two Teams - IGN
Naughty Dog, the Sony-owned studio behind Uncharted and The Last of Us, has been split into two internal teams working on separate projects.www.ign.com
So they had since then a single big project under production at the same time (first Uncharted 4, later TLOU2 and later TLOU Online) while they had other projects in preproduction or were minor projects like overviewing/supporting the remasters/remakes/ports.
It has been recently where in addition to TLOU Online they also have a big SP project under production after having growing during a few years.
SSM only worked on a single big project at the same time. If the Cory new IP pitch got approved in summer 2018 and entered preproduction, so production pretty likely in 2019 then it would be the first time (I assume it's the case) that would be the first time they have two big games at the same time (I assume that the GoWR after release moved to start the production of the next GoW game, which I assume was under production until then also overviewed by Cory).
Bend, Media Molecule, Polyphony, Housemarque, Bluepoint, London, Sucker Punch, San Diego also worked always in a single big project, and same goes with Guerrilla, who recently with HFW+Horizon Online (if they mostly develop it instead of only overviewing/supporting other studio, as they did with Horizon CoM) and later H3+Horizon Online would be the first time they work on two big productions at the same time. We don't know about Sucker Punch, but they may also have switched in recent years to have two full production teams.
All these teams had only a single full production team and in recent years thanks to the growth in manpower some of them created a 2nd track for full big AAA production. Some who didn't make the jump to have a 2nd big project may do it.
Insomniac, Firesprite, Bungie, XDEV, Japan Studio (now splitted into Asobi and the Asian XDEV team) already worked on multiple games at the same time before but they kept growing, so pretty likely now will handle more games at the same time. If not now in the next few years pretty likely will start to do it.
OP
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Regardless of issues devs such as guerilla games also have had multiple teams for over a decade which is my point. This isn't a new strategy but one implemented years ago.
When I say they only had a single team I mean they only had a single big AAA project under full production. While doing that, games often have very small teams supporting external projects, working on preproduction of future projects or work in some small side project.
And yes, to highly grow the manpower of all their existing 1P teams and to make many acquisitions is a new strategy by Jim Ryan and Hermen Hulst. They and Sony started to talk about it and to implement it when they were there. Even if obviously also acquired some studios before (but never at this pace) or grew some studios (but never at this pace and in all their studios).
OP
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Growing teams within their established devs and working on multiple projects is not a new Jim Ryan thing and has been a strategy again for over a decade but hey I'll leave it at that. We are going in circles at this point. Definitely do not agree with tht and it is false that it's only been in play since Ryan or last four years.
Potentially controversial take: Naughty Dog's best days are probably behind them.
Unless proven otherwise, I think it's best to ask how big and quickly the fall will be. Will it be graceful and gradual, or a crash & burn.
Fun Fact: Crash 'n Burn was a launch game for the 3DO, which is also the platform Naughty Dog last released a game on before working with Sony & Universal on Crash Bandicoot. Their sole 3DO release was...Way of the Warrior.
I don't think you've made a single post on this forum that wasn't a stealth dig at Sony or PlayStation in one way or another.
Unless proven otherwise, I think it's best to ask how big and quickly the fall will be. Will it be graceful and gradual, or a crash & burn.
Fun Fact: Crash 'n Burn was a launch game for the 3DO, which is also the platform Naughty Dog last released a game on before working with Sony & Universal on Crash Bandicoot. Their sole 3DO release was...Way of the Warrior.
I don't think you've made a single post on this forum that wasn't a stealth dig at Sony or PlayStation in one way or another.
Not only ND. (I know Jaffe made a troll video about it) But I think/feel there is homogeneity between Sony's games.
not just in certain aspects of gameplay and design but themes as well.
This could potentially backfire by creating this narrative of "more of the same/copy-paste" experiences. (what happened to Ubisoft).
I will choose to believe that Sony is aware of that, and when the actual true Next-Gen games come out we should see a very different design philosophy and themes as well.
What I say matches with the release dates of each studio having in most cases (there are a few exceptions, like TLG) the average development time for AAA games at the time.
If ND, SSM, Bend, Guerrilla, London, Sucker Punch, Guerrilla, Housemarque, Bluepoint already were working at the time at multiple AAA games at the same time where are these second projects? Did all studios cancel a project when it was under production for each game they released? And why we never heard about them other than a couple games like Stig's SSM new IP?
The answer is easy: they never existed because they were only working on a single AAA at the same time, and they didn't grow until having enough people to handle two teams until the Jim Ryan era (in fact some of them still didn't reach that size, and with the ND failed attempt as exception).
This post makes me absolutely certain that you misspelled your name here, and it should be Nimrod.
I hope you're talking about Uncharted 4 (which I haven't played, so exclude that from my statement).