A former Naughty Dog dev has revealed the studio sees crunch as a natural consequence of maintaining its level of quality. Crunch, a practice in which devs are either required or feel coerced to put in extreme hours to reach a certain deadline, has been a hot-button issue across the gaming industry for years, and it sadly doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. According to one insider, it’s become so pervasive at Naughty Dog in particular because the company has accepted it as inevitable.
The Sony-owned studio behind Uncharted and The Last of Us is far from the only developer to make headlines for its mandatory overtime. However, it has become somewhat synonymous with the practice after multiple noteworthy instances. Most recently, it came out that the Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet team was already crunching, despite the game being over a year away from its anticipated release window. Now, someone who used to work for the studio and is familiar with its crunch philosophy has clarified why that may be the case.
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Besnon Russell, who formerly worked as a senior game designer for Naughty Dog, revealed on the Kiwi Talkz podcast that the studio eventually accepted crunch as inevitable after trying and failing to mitigate it. According to Russell, the team had several meetings about the issue and how to prevent it, but at some point after making The Last of Us, leadership admitted that “this is what it takes to make games to our level.” To that point, Naughty Dog has a reputation for consistently putting out excellent games, but unfortunately, the studio seems to believe extreme overtime is necessary to maintain that pattern.
The ex-Naughty Dog dev also suggested that instances like Intergalactic‘s seemingly premature crunch stem from treating internal deadlines like external ones. While this approach may help keep games on track, it increases the pressure to make quick progress, leading to more overtime earlier in the cycle. Russell hinted that Sony’s oversight may play a role, too. Many Naughty Dog games have taken several years to develop and have fairly high budgets, so Sony leadership may be anxious to see progress after an extended period of pouring money into a project.
Russell did not speak of Naughty Dog with any animosity over this issue and said it was understanding of any employees who didn’t want to partake in that culture and part ways with the company. He also said the studio doesn’t necessarily require devs to work overtime but heavily incentivizes it because its bonuses are tied to the amount an employee has contributed to a project. Despite the attitude that this obstacle is inevitable, it doesn’t seem to appear with every title to come out of Naughty Dog, either. Another dev reported that 2022’s The Last of Us Part 1 was made without any crunch time, though that does seem to be an exception to the rule.
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Still, crunch remains a highly controversial issue, and Naughty Dog’s reported approach to it is not likely to sit well with everyone. If Intergalactic is Naughty Dog’s most expensive game yet, as Neil Druckmann has claimed it may be, that could bring all the more pressure to put in long hours to get the game across the finish line. The true extent of what will go into the game won’t be clear until closer to or even after release, but for now, it sounds like crunch at Naughty Dog isn’t going away.