The Last of Us wrapped up its first season over the weekend with a record high of 8.2 million viewers. It pulled the series’ biggest same-day audience while competing with the Oscars which took place during the same night. Neil Druckmann, Co-President at Naughty Dog, and brought the game and show to life with Craig Mazin. Yesterday, Druckmann broke down the show with Kinda Funny and during the spoilercast, he also revealed that Naughty Dog has chosen its new project to work on following The Last of Us multiplayer game that they have been working on since they decided to make its own separate thing.
Talking about what to expect next from Naughty Dog, Druckmann said “The Last of Us multiplayer game is our next big title. You’ll hear much more about it later this year and I’m stoked for it. That one’s an interesting experience for me personally because it’s the first Last of Us game that I’m not the primary writer, I’m not the director, so I get to see it more from the side and play more of a producer role and more of a mentor role, and that to me is really exciting, and what the team has put together is so cool.”
“I know the fans really want Last of Us Part 3,” Druckmann said. “I hear about it all of the time and all I can say is that look, we’re already into our next project, so the decision has already been made. I can’t say what it is, but that’s the process we went through, that there was a lot of consideration of different things, and we picked the thing we were most excited for.”
Explaining how Naughty Dog picks its projects, Druckmann said that they are lucky because they can choose what they want to work on next. “I am very lucky that I don’t have to think like that,” he said. “I joined a studio that was already so successful that we could be kind of prima donnas and just do whatever we want. I know not everybody has that privilege but it’s not something I take lightly. So at the end of every project, we purposefully explore several different projects. Some of them might be a sequel and then a bunch of new ideas, and then we really feel like, ‘where do our passions lie?’ Because that’s the fire that has to sustain for years to come. And if you pick the wrong project and then you burn out from that idea because you weren’t that passionate about it, two years into a four-year project, you’re fucked. That’s how you, I think, make mediocre anything – if you lose your excitement from it.”