Naughty Dog studio head and The Last of Us creator Neil Druckmann has been in hot water lately after a controversial interview with Sony. Now, however, he's claimed that several of his answers were shortened and taken out of context, including a lofty prediction about the studio's next game.
Neil Druckmann leaves game development after destroying Naughty Dog with Last Of Us 2
This all started after an interview with Sony's Druckmann a few days ago. The company will release these every now and then to showcase some talent from the many, many studios under their banner, but Druckmann's stood out for a few reasons. The veteran game director went on the rampage for AI in game development, and also apparently stated that Naughty Dog's next game will "redefine [mainstream perceptions of gaming]."
That last statement sounds like something you’d hear from Hideo Kojima on a bad day, but in Kojima’s defense, he literally invented the stealth genre. The backlash has been loud, not just from AI proponents, but also because Druckmann has apparently gotten a little too big for his britches, especially since Naughty Dog games have more or less followed the same formula for over 15 years.
Granted, these answers seem to be in character for Druckmann, who famously said that Naughty Dog “doesn't use the word 'fun'” when developing games, but he later claimed on X that his originally much longer answers had been shortened and re-contextualized for the sake of brevity.
