Naughty Dog—the studio behind franchises like The Last of Us and Uncharted, and upcoming title Intergalactic—is no stranger to forcing its employees into periods of crunch during game development. Former senior game designer at the studio, Benson Russell, spoke about the studio learning all the wrong lessons about the “value” of crunch in a recent episode of the Kiwi Talkz podcast.
“They’ll set internal deadlines, and treat them like actual, external deadlines,” he said on the podcast. “It’s at that point you realize you’ve wandered too much, and it could be Sony tapping them on the shoulder, being like, ‘Hey guys, it’s been three years, not seeing much from you, we’ve spent I don’t know how much money already, what’s going on?”
Russell explained that the studio seemingly learned from its time developing The Last of Us that crunch is what it would take to make the games. “It was just an admission in a [meeting after The Last of Us], ‘Well, we’ve just come to realize this is what it takes to make games at our level,” he said.
“‘If you don’t want to do that, we understand, we’ll write you a great letter of recommendation.’ The company runs the way it wants to run; you either want to be a part of it or you don’t. They’re not technically breaking any laws. It’s not like a requirement. It is a, ‘hey, we really could use your help. Please come here.’ And you’re incentivized to do it because your bonuses will be bigger.”
A report from back in 2020 was one of the bigger ones to bring the company’s culture of crunch into the light. In a report, Jason Schreier—writing for Kotaku at the time—conducted interviews with multiple current and former employees from Naughty Dog on the condition of anonymity, and made note of unhealthy working hours and overtime work still being prevalent.
“This can’t be something that’s continuing over and over for each game, because it is unsustainable,” said one developer working on The Last of Us Part 2. “At a certain point, you realize, ‘I can’t keep doing this. I’m getting older. I can’t stay and work all night.’”
“They do try to take care of you, providing food, encouragement to go take breaks,” said another former Naughty Dog developer. “But for the most part, the implication is: ‘Get the job done at all costs.’”
It is worth noting that reports of Naughty Dog’s employees being forced to crunch are by no means recent. The company also came under fire for this back in 2011, shortly after the release of Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, with creative director Amy Hennig talking about how “it was the hardest thing in the industry [I’ve] ever done.” Similarly, cinematics animation lead Josh Scherr said that “it was pretty brutal this time around. I mean, there’s always crunch. There’s always people putting in extra hours. But this time around, just because of the scope and the ambition of the game – even after we had gone back and shortened some things, trimmed some other things – there was just still a lot to do, in the amount of time we had to do it.”
Intergalactic is being developed exclusively for PS5. While it doesn’t yet have a release date, reports indicate that Naughty Dog might be aiming for a mid-2027 launch.
