American first-part video game developer Naughty Dog will land one of their most renowned writers and creative director for games such as Uncharted and The Last of Us, in the form of Neil Druckmann as one of their presidents, along with Evan Wells, to lead the company.
The game studio has announced the news on their official website. It was then only president of Naughty Dog himself Evan Wells who made the announcement and shared that there are some who are rewarded by "well-deserved promotions", and one of which was Druckmann's.
The Long History of Druckmann in Naughty Dog
The newly crowned co-president entered the premises of the company in 2004 where he began as an intern for its programming department. He worked on the game Jak 3 from the Jak franchise of games, also developed and published by Naughty Dog. He focused to develop the localization tools and gameplay programming aspect of the game. His performance was highly seen and regarded as an outstanding one and was offered a full-time position by then co-presidents of the company Wells and Stephen White.
He started his work as a designer and writer in 2005 for then developing games such as Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier, and the Uncharted: Drake's Fortune in 2007 where probably his rise to the game industry began to see recognition from the critics and the gaming community.
After mounting a huge success with the Uncharted series, he was then assigned to be the lead designer, writer, and creative director of The Last of Us, a game released in 2013 that would eventually become one of the best-selling games during that year, and one of the most critically acclaimed and most awarded games to date.
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Druckman's creativity in terms of visual aspects, poetry in writing and incorporation of a real-life scenario-based storyline on the game marked The Last of Us' rise to fame especially for the PlayStation 4 console games. The game bagged Druckmann's performance his then eventual awards and recognitions, including a British Academy Game Award or BAFTA, a Design Innovate Communicate Entertain or D.I.C.E. Award, a Golden Joystick Award, a Game Developers Choice Award, and a Writers Guild of America Award.
In 2018, he was then promoted to be Naughty Dog's Vice President. He returned as a creative director and co-writer for the second installment to The Last of Us franchise, The Last of Us Part II. That time, his work was seen on a mix of views by the fans and critics. His more violent, revenge-themed gameplay polarized how the video gaming community perceived the overall game.
Yet he gained nominations and awards for his work, including the Golden Joystick Award and The Game Awards which The Last of Us Part II headlines the number of nominations with 10 awards possibly on hand for Naughty Dog and Druckmann.
Now as co-president, many are expecting for the company to enter a more creative space and atmosphere as the multi-awarded writer, designer and creative director would take the lead along with the game studio's long-time co-president. Aside from Druckmann, two more from the company received promotions as announced alongside the Uncharted writer. Former Director of Operations Alison Mori and former Co-Director of Programming Christian Gyrling were also promoted as new Vice Presidents of Naughty Dog.
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