Naughty Dog, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Santa Monica, California.
Founded by Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin in 1984 as an independent developer, the studio was
acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment in 2001.
Gavin and Rubin produced a sequence of progressively more successful games, including Rings of
Power for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive and Way of the Warrior for the 3DO.
The latter — a very low-budget but still plausible offering — prompted Universal
Interactive Studios to sign the duo to a three-title deal and fund the expansion of the company.
Mark Cerny, who was an assistant programmer for Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for Sega, convinced
Naughty Dog to focus its new resources on creating a character-based platform game that
would fully exploit the 3D capabilities of the new systems.
Ultimately, this led to the release of Crash Bandicoot for the PlayStation on August 31,
1996.
Naughty Dog developed three Crash Bandicoot sequels over the next several years.
In January 2001, it was announced Sony would acquire Naughty Dog.
After developing Crash Team Racing, the company began working on Jak and Daxter for the PlayStation
2.
In 2004, Naughty Dog's studio president and co-founder, Jason Rubin, left the company
to work on a new project named Iron and the Maiden.
In addition to their inhouse game team, Naughty Dog is also home to the ICE Team, one of SCE
Worldwide Studios's central technology groups.
The company's first PlayStation 3 title, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, was released in 2007, its
sequel, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, in 2009, and Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception in November
2011.
Naughty Dog was known for having a history of not only developing one game at a time,
but only one franchise per console; a trend that has garnered criticism from fans.
This lasted until Naughty Dog announced a new intellectual property called The Last
of Us at the Spike Video Game Awards on December 10, 2011 for the PlayStation 3, which was
in development by a second team at the studio and was released in June 2013 to overwhelming
critical acclaim.
Beginning in early 2014, the studio has experienced multiple departures, the highest level of
departure being lead Uncharted writer Amy Hennig.
Their current project is the next installment in the Uncharted series, Uncharted 4: A Thief's
End, which the company teased at the PlayStation 4 launch event in November 2013 and then revealed
on E3 2014 in June 2014.
Company overview High school students, Jason Rubin and Andy
Gavin, having experimented with Lisp and C++, teamed up to create video games and founded
"Jam Software" in 1984.
Rubin and Gavin chose to only create software for the Apple II and decided to create a skiing
game for their second title.
During production of the game, Gavin accidentally copied bootleg games over the only copy of
the skiing game they had.
Rubin then created a new skiing game called Ski Crazed within the weekend.
Because the game played slowly, Gavin reprogrammed the game to play quicker.
The game was later picked up and published by Baudville, who bought the game from Jam
Software for $250.
Rubin and Gavin then created an Apple IIGS graphic adventure game titled Dream Zone,
which was released in 1988 and ported to the Atari ST, Amiga and personal computer.
In 1989, Rubin and Gavin released another game titled Keef the Thief, which was published
by Electronic Arts for the Apple IIGS, Amiga and personal computer.
To make a fresh start and to dissolve their relationship with Baudville, Rubin and Gavin
renamed Jam Software as Naughty Dog.
In the early 90's, Naughty Dog created Rings of Power, which was published by Electronic
Arts for the Mega Drive/Genesis in 1991.
The company's character in the logo is a grinning dog wearing goggles.
By that time, Rubin and Gavin were in college and Naughty Dog was bankrupt.
Rubin and Gavin then produced the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer title Way of the Warrior and presented
it to Mark Cerny of Universal Interactive Studios.
Cerny was pleased with Way of the Warrior and signed Naughty Dog on to Universal Interactive
Studios for three additional games.
Rubin and Gavin devised a plan to create a three-dimensional action-platform game.
Because the player would be forced to constantly look at the character's rear, the game was
jokingly codenamed "Sonic's Ass Game".
Production of the game began in 1994, during which Naughty Dog expanded its number of employees
and invented a development tool called "Goal Oriented Object LISP", to create the characters
and gameplay.
Cartoonists Charles Zembillas and Joe Pearson were recruited to create the characters of
the game, which resulted in the titular character Crash Bandicoot.
After 14 months of development, the game was shown to Sony Computer Entertainment, who
then signed on to publish the game.
Crash Bandicoot was shown to the public for the first time at E3 and went on to become
one of the highest-selling titles for the PlayStation console, selling over 6.8 million
copies to date.
Naughty Dog continued to develop two more Crash Bandicoot games, with a spin-off Crash
Team Racing kart racing game.
By then the studio was looking to develop games for Sony and not be constrained by Universal
Interactive.
Since Universal held the rights to the Crash series, Naughty Dog could not develop future
Crash games in its own right.
The studio would be bought out by Sony to avoid a repeat while it focused on developing
the first game of the Jax and Daxter series.
The Jak and Daxter games met similar success as the Crash games.
During the development of Jak 3 and Jak X racing games, Rubin and Gavin slowly transitioned
Evan Wells and Christophe Balestra to become Co-Presidents of Naughty Dog by the time the
founders leave the studio.
Since 2007, Naughty Dog has worked on the Uncharted series, and thus made their first
official approach to realistic worlds and characters, in contrast to their Crash Bandicoot
and Jak and Daxter series, which featured fantastical worlds set in a completely fictional
setting.
The Uncharted franchise has been universally praised for its cinematic quality and technical
proficiency, and has sold nearly 17 million copies worldwide as of April 2012.
During the 2011 Spike TV Video Game Awards, Naughty Dog unveiled a new intellectual property,
The Last of Us, described as a "post-apocalyptic third-person action-adventure game", following
the plight of a teenage girl, Ellie, and her adult protector, Joel, in a post-apocalyptic
United States overrun with humans infected with a disease reminiscent of the infection
caused by Cordyceps unilateralis.
The Last of Us received universal acclaim upon release.
In 2012 and 2013, Naughty Dog teamed with Mass Media Inc. to release the Jak and Daxter
Collection.
The collection contains high-definition ports of the original PlayStation 2 trilogy and
was released for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita respectively.
On November 14, 2013, during the PS4 All Access Launch Event on Spike, Naughty Dog revealed
two teaser trailers.
The first unveils The Last of Us's single-player DLC, Left Behind, starring Ellie and Riley,
a girl that she met during the events of the American Dreams prequel comic series.
The second teaser revealed the studio's first PlayStation 4 title, the next installment
of Uncharted, making the series their first IP to sprawl across two home console generations.
On November 23, 2013, Corrinne Yu, principal engine architect at Microsoft's Halo 4 developer
343 Industries, announced that she had joined Naughty Dog.
On December 7, 2013, during the first edition of Spike's VGX award show, Naughty Dog won
the Studio of the Year award for their work on The Last of Us.
On March 4, 2014, Uncharted lead writer Amy Hennig left the studio, with Uncharted 3 director
Justin Richmond and The Last of Us lead artist Nate Wells leaving soon after.
Later, it was revealed that The Last of Us would be released on the PlayStation 4 as
a remastered version.
Development philosophy Naughty Dog is known for its unique way of
handling game development, as the studio doesn't have any producer in both of their teams.
The work culture at Naughty Dog is very different to many other studios; there's a lot less
middle-management; the studio's lead effects artist, Keith Guerrette, said: "It comes with
a lot of pros and cons but I think it definitely is one of our biggest strengths.
Looking around at the rest of the industry, and this is something that we do talk about
quite a bit, the companies that are doing really innovative, cool things are all the
ones that don't have the management, like the business side, directly injected into
the company.
Sony's put us in this fantastic situation where we don't have any producers; we don't
have any interactions with Sony corporate at all on the development."
Naughty Dog has also complete freedom in basically every aspect of game design, and that also
means that Sony Computer Entertainment, the parent company, doesn't prevent the studio
from any implementation of game elements.
ICE Team Naughty Dog is home to the ICE Team, one of
Sony's World Wide Studios central technology groups.
The term ICE originally stands for Initiative for a Common Engine which describes the original
purpose of the studio.
The ICE Team focuses on creating core graphics technologies for Sony's worldwide first party
published titles, including low level game engine components, graphics processing pipelines,
supporting tools, and graphics profiling and debugging tools.
The ICE Team also supports third party developers with a suite of engine components, and a graphics
analysis, profiling, and debugging tool for the RSX.
Both enable developers to get better performance out of PlayStation hardwares.
Games developed as Jam Software
as Naughty Dog Partnerships with other developers
Insomniac Games Since working together in the same building
on the Universal Interactive Studios backlot, Naughty Dog and Insomniac Games have had a
close relationship.
Producer Mark Cerny has worked extensively with both companies.
They have made similar types of games.
For example, in the late 1990s, Naughty Dog's Crash Bandicoot series and Insomniac's Spyro
the Dragon series both competed on the PlayStation as character-heavy platforming games with
imaginative environments.
With the release of the PlayStation 2, the two series were left in Universal's hands,
and both developers continued in friendly competition after the creation of their new
flagship franchises.
With the release of the PlayStation 3, both developers changed focus, with Naughty Dog's
action-adventure series Uncharted and Insomniac's science fiction first-person shooter series
Resistance, although Insomniac continued to work on the Ratchet and Clank series.
Both Naughty Dog and Insomniac have stated that they do not have plans for making a game
together, even though, with Activision Blizzard holding the publishing rights to both the
Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon characters, there have been a pair of crossover games
released between the two, while Sony released PlayStation Move Heroes and PlayStation All-Stars
Battle Royale, both PlayStation 3 games which featured characters created by both Naughty
Dog and Insomniac in the same game as well as characters created by Sucker Punch Productions.
Ready at Dawn Didier Malenfant, a former developer of Naughty
Dog, left the company in 2003 to form a new development company, Ready at Dawn, with former
members of Naughty Dog and Blizzard Entertainment.
Also, Ready at Dawn developed Daxter which was produced by Naughty Dog.
Daxter is a midquel to Naughty Dog's Jak and Daxter series.
High Impact Games Naughty Dog shared its library of assets to
High Impact Games in order to develop Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier.
The company is also made up of former members of Naughty Dog as well as former members of
Insomniac Games.
Awards Wins
(2009) Winner—D.I.C.E Award for Overall Game of the Year
(2009) Winner —Spike Video Game Awards for Game of the Year
(2010) Winner —Game Developers Choice Awards for Game of the Year
(2013) Winner —Spike Video Game Awards for Studio of the Year
(2013) Winner—BAFTA Video Games Awards for Best Game
(2013) Winner—D.I.C.E Award for Overall Game of the Year
(2013) Winner—D.I.C.E Award for Innovation in Gaming
(2014) Winner —Game Developers Choice Awards for Game of the Year
References
External links Naughty Dog's official website