While The Last of Us Online ultimately got cancelled, developers at Naughty Dog who actually worked on the project have now struck out to start up their own studio to work on a similar game in Japan. Two former Naughty Dog developers are involved with this new project: The Last of Us Online game director Vinit Agarwal and creative director Joe Pettinati. In an interview with Game*Spark, Agarwal spoke about the duo’s new project, as well as his history of work at Naughty Dog.
“I’ve been in the game industry for about 15 years and I’ve worked at Naughty Dog for 10 of them,” said Agarwal (via machine translation). “Before that, I was involved in the development of free-to-play games, but when I wanted to make a more hardcore game. I encountered the multiplayer mode [Factions] that was included in the first [The Last of Us] and became very addicted.”
“I applied for Naughty Dog and fortunately joined the company. There are a lot of amazing people in the industry at Naughty Dog, so I was worried that I would be fired in a month, but I was able to work from junior game designer to game director. Then, I became independent in early 2025.”
As for his new project, Agarwal has confirmed that work on it has been going on for “several months”, and that it is currently in a playable state. While he isn’t yet ready to start showcasing the game, he does go on to describe it as a multiplayer title with cinematic action gameplay. He also said that, rather than being a new triple-A game, this project is “triple-indie” in its scope, explaining that it has “indie-like speed” but without the big budgets of a typical AAA project.
“There’s not much we can say yet, but the new game is a multiplayer game, and we aim to bring the cinematic action we’ve been familiar with from our previous titles to multiplayer,” he said. “We’re already in contact with partners, and we expect to have more information to share in the future.”
The studio working on the game is fairly small, with ten developers working on the game right now. Agarwal has said that he wants it to grow up to have a maximum of 30 employees in the future, with the low headcount being maintained to keep “a sense of speed and flexibility”. The studio itself is split into two offices, with Agarwal working out of an office in Japan while Pettinati heads up a base in the USA.
To help the development of the new project, Agarwal went into some of the things he had previously worked at during his tenure with Naughty Dog, confirming that he was involved with games like Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, Uncharted: Lost Legacy, and The Last of Us Part 2. In these games, Agarwal helped develop the final boss of both Uncharted titles, as well as the boss fight between Ellie and Abby in The Last of Us Part 2.
