What’s up everybody! I’m Dev and I’m a little bummed that ‘The Lost Legacy’ is Naughty Dog’s last ‘Uncharted’...anything.
From ‘Crash Bandicoot’ to ‘The Last of Us,’ the studio has been making some of gaming’s most impressive titles for over thirty years now.
But how did a company started by two teenage kids become Sony’s secret weapon?
Hey, plumber boy, moustache man... Your worst nightmare has arrived!
Let’s take a look at the history of Naughty Dog and go through some of the reasons they became one of the most prestigious gaming studios today.
For starters, they came from humble beginnings.
Naughty Dog began as the passion project of two friends who met in Hebrew school when they were just twelve years old.
Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin bonded over their mutual fascination with computers, and in 1984 they teamed up to make their own games.
They called their company JAM Software, which stood for “Jason and Andy’s Magic.”
If you asked our parents today what they thought of what we were doing back then,
They would say "oh we pushed them to make games, we were very supportive."
Nobody thought like that. Back then you were a geek.
In 1989, they changed their name to Naughty Dog, and Rubin whipped up this sick logo that looks like something a Tony Hawk character would wear.
They made a couple of Apple II games and 16-bit RPGs, but their first big break was a 1994 fighter for the 3DO called ‘Way of the Warrior.’
It’s one of a zillion bloody Mortal Kombat Klones that came out in the era, but it’s definitely more polished than most.
Which is pretty surprising, considering they were absolutely broke when making it.
The guys in Naughty Dog paid their buddies $25 bucks to portray the fighters, and they wore costumes made out of pillowcases and spray-painted McNugget containers.
Since Rubin and Gavin were studying at MIT at the time, some of these dorky-looking karate dudes are now, no joke, world famous biophysicists like Vijay Pande and David Liu.
When the game was finished, they shopped it around to some publishers.
And Universal Interactive was so impressed that they signed Naughty Dog to a three game deal.
Their next creation would fill a gap that Sony’s new Playstation console desperately needed.
All because they read the market.
Naughty Dog had a publisher, and they had a platform.
Now, they needed a game.
Who wants to play bideo games?
And during the long-ass move from Boston to LA, Rubin and Gavin came up with a banger:
‘Crash Bandicoot’
They knew that developers were scrambling to translate 2D genres to next-gen 3D consoles.
Fighting and racing games had already made the leap, but at that point no one had successfully made a 3D version of side-scrollers like ‘Mario’ and ‘Sonic.’
Naughty Dog wanted to be the first.
They wanted to make something that looked as incredible as ‘Donkey Kong Country’ on SNES.
But that took a lot of power, so a free-roaming 3D world like ‘Mario 64’ was out.
Instead, they built the gameplay around linear corridors and stuck the camera right behind your character.
That’s why ‘Crash’ was originally codenamed ‘Sonic’s Ass Game,’ since that’s what you’d be staring at for hours.
Now that I’m thinking about it, they could’ve just named it ‘Tails,’ but that’s no fun.
‘Sonic’s Ass’ wasn’t going to fly with SEGA, so Naughty Dog came up with a brand new character.
Animals with attitude were all the rage back then.
So they picked some candidates from a book about Tasmanian marsupials.
For a long time, Crash was actually known as Willy the Wombat.
Thankfully, that was already taken.
Any gamer in the U.S. that picked up a box with Willy the Wombat and the
goofy character that came from that would have been an absolute disaster.
So they switched him to a bandicoot named Crash, after the way he ripped through wooden crates.
‘Crash Bandicoot’ was a huge hit, and it filled a void that Sony didn’t even know they needed.
Are you aware Mr. Feldman that Sony Playstation has over 150 games?
He became the company’s unofficial mascot.
Which wasn’t ideal, because Sony didn’t actually own the character.
And neither did Naughty Dog, Universal did.
But that’s okay, because Naughty Dog changed with the times.
The studio was gearing up to make a big splash on the upcoming Playstation 2 console.
But the increase in power meant they needed a lot more money and manpower to make the game work.
Naughty Dog went from being a team that tried to save money and work as tightly as we could
to "hire big, think big, let's put everything we have into making these games."
On top of that, Sony was not happy that Universal owned all the rights to Crash.
So to avoid that whole problem, and give Naughty Dog the resources they needed, Sony just straight up bought them in 2001.
Sony still let the studio operate independently,
And thanks to their insider knowledge of Playstation’s hardware, they were able to push even more technical boundaries.
Since they wanted a fresh start after three ‘Crash’ games and a kart racer, Naughty Dog came up with a brand new franchise: ‘Jak and Daxter.’
Man, that stung! I told you we shouldn't have come here! And you listened!
The game was way more open than ‘Crash,’ and the company started experimenting with that cinematic flavor that made them famous with ‘Uncharted.’
The first ‘Jak’ was a cartoony platformer, but after ‘GTA 3’ came out in 2001, Naughty Dog could see that the days of cute animal mascots were numbered.
I mean what’s cuter than murdering people for their cars and robbing hard-working prostitutes of their money?
Each ‘Jak and Daxter’ sequel went the way of ‘Harry Potter’ and got darker and grittier ‘cause that’s what gamers wanted.
And that’s what’s great about Naughty Dog.
They know the gaming industry and they know when to move on.
When it came time to design their first Playstation 3 game, Naughty Dog decided to try something they’d never tried before:
Six-Axis controls. Remember that, Moose? The whole f*cking grenade thing? Who uses that?
More importantly, this was their first attempt at photorealism.
I mean, personally, I still roll around in any small puddle I see just to see Drake's clothes get wet because it looks good.
Rubin and Gavin had left the company at this point, but it was in good hands.
Their replacements hired ‘Legacy of Kain’ writer Amy Hennig to come up with a new franchise to showcase that next gen power of the PS3.
They didn’t have a solid concept in mind, it was just called ‘Project: Big.’
Hennig toyed around with ideas involving an underwater complex and a post-apocalyptic wasteland, but she wanted to move away from the drab aesthetic of modern games.
So she landed on an old-school pulp adventure inspired by ‘Indiana Jones’ called ‘Uncharted.’
Here goes nothing...
The first game from 2007 was a decent start, but the series really hit its stride with ‘Uncharted 2’ in 2009.
By then, they knew the PS3 inside and out, so they had the confidence to play with bigger set-pieces and cinematic structure.
And new mo-cap technology let them capture every aspect of an actor’s performance, from vocals to facial expressions.
C'mon, gimme a hand with this... [GRUNTS]
That’s why Drake, Sully, Elena and the whole gang feel like flesh and blood characters.
After the success of ‘Uncharted 2,’ the studio was ready for a challenge they had never tackled before:
They split into two teams, and worked on two separate games simultaneously.
One group worked on ‘Uncharted 3,’ and another team started something codenamed “Thing.”
They toyed with the idea of making a ‘Jak and Daxter’ reboot, but they realized that ship had sailed.
Instead, they dialed back the fun action of ‘Uncharted’ to create a lonely apocalyptic adventure.
And ‘Project Thing’ became ‘The Last of Us.’
Y’know, Naughty Dog games get some flak for being more of a rollercoaster ride than a deep gameplay experience,
but that’s what I love so much about them.
It really feels like you’re the one in control of a big-budget blockbuster movie.
And sometimes that’s way better than being dropped into an open world with everything to do and no clue where to go.
It’s hard to think of another studio that can match the detail, style and spectacle of Naughty Dog.
Granted, a lot of that comes from the fact they only have to develop for one system, so they can wring every ounce of power from the hardware.
But you can’t deny the polish and passion that goes into every pixel of a Naughty Dog game.
‘Uncharted 4’ was the last adventure for Nathan Drake, and ‘The Lost Legacy’ spinoff is the last time Naughty Dog is going to play in that universe.
Still, I’m really looking forward to ‘The Last of Us: Part 2’ and whatever Naughty Dog does next.
Whether they continue Ellie and Joel’s saga, or they wow us with something completely new, one thing’s for sure:
I’m always waiting for that next Naughty Dog game.