Co-writer and co-director of The Last of Us, Neil Druckmann, recently mentioned to be looking for new less stressful role. What's next for one of the biggest names in the games industry?
The games industry is in a very weird place recently. On the one hand, 2023 saw a ton of really great and successful game releases, like Diablo 4, Baldur's Gate 3, Mortal Kombat 1 and many more, on the other hand many studios are having layoffs or are being shut down completely. We also know, that working as a developer can be pretty stressful and mean a lot of crunch and overtime.
Now one of the biggest names in the gaming community, Neil Druckmann, spoke about how stressful his job is and that he "doesn't see himself doing this forever at this scale."
Is Neil Druckmann Leaving The Games Industry?
Neil Druckmann is the Co-President of Naughty Dog, one of the most influential video game developers globally. He's especially renowned for his work as the creative director and co-writer of the critically acclaimed "The Last of Us" series and "Uncharted". His storytelling prowess has significantly shaped modern narrative-driven video games and pretty much all games he worked on, are considered to be absolute bangers.
In a recent interview with US rapper Logic, Druckmann was asked, how long he sees himself working in the games industry and his response was:
"I guess that I don't see myself doing this forever at this scale."
He continues to explain, how extremely stressful managing a ton of people and several studios is. According to him, he had a lot of fun developing Uncharted 2 , which was released in October 2009, because the whole studio was pretty much flying under the radar. The first Uncharted game was good, but not a huge success, so Naughty Dog had the opportunity to work on Uncharted 2 without too much pressure. After the crazy success of that game, however, everything changed. The studio now had to fulfill the expectations of their fans and also their publisher Sony, which meant that every game had to be great and new.
That obviously puts a lot of stress on someone in a position like that of Druckmann and led to him thinking:
"I've started thinking about how many more of these games do I have in me, and it's not that many."
But does this mean Neil Druckmann will leave the games industry forever? Well, thankfully not. Druckmann said he wants to transition to "something that's like more low-key, and lower stressed, that still allows him to have this creative outlet". Basically, what it boils down to is, that Druckmann doesn't want to have the responsibilities and thus the stress of his current position in one of the most influential game studios ever, but wants to rather work on smaller projects.
While it will be hard to see someone as influential as Druckmann leave or at least cut back significantly, we do wish him all the best for his future projects. And hey, maybe a "smaller" project of him will be amazing as well. Just imagine a Neil Druckmann indie game...