Industry veteran Bruce Straley said he left Naughty Dog in part because he wanted to own what he was working on.
Conversation with Polygonthe developer explained that the decision to leave The Last of Us and Uncharted was twofold; Besides ownership, he wanted new challenges beyond what his former studio was working on.
Straley left Naughty Dog in September 2017.. During his time at the studio, he worked on the company's games Crash and Jak and Daxter, before being named co-art director on 2007's Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. He then became game director for the game's sequel, before heading up development on The Last of Us and Uncharted 4: A Thief's End.
“I was there 18 years. That's a long time for someone to be anywhere,” Straley explained.
“I think I played a very important role in creating this brand and these games, and I had a really amazing experience working with these teams. But I felt like I was answering the same questions over and over again. We were kind of in this paradigm of this style of play – that I was part of the creation! But I felt like I'd been in this position before. My brain doesn't handle that kind of repetition very well. I need new problems to solve, I need new creative outlets. I'm not saying there won't be there. opportunity, but couple that feeling with the thought that I was working really, really hard on something that wasn’t mine.”
Straley said that after leaving Naughty Dog, he didn't want to go to another AAA studio because he didn't want to deal with “a completely different bureaucratic or cultural system,” which was apparently the reason he went independent. In 2022 he announced a new studio, Wildflower Interactive.who recently presented its debut game Coven of the Chicken Foot at The Game Awards 2025..
“When it came time to think about whether to stay at Naughty Dog or leave, I thought: where else can I go?” Straley said.
“Naughty Dog is literally the pinnacle of gaming style, and I really enjoyed making and playing games in that style. I wasn't going to go to another AAA studio to make a first-person shooter or a puzzle platformer. It just didn't feel like I was going to go anywhere else. Then I'd have to deal with a completely different bureaucratic or cultural system, so that was already the answer for me. Okay, I can't go anywhere else.”
“That's the argument for unionization: whoever co-created this world and these characters doesn't get a reward or a cent for the work they put into it,” Straley said at the time.
