Former Naughty Dog animator: "I wouldn't advise anyone to work here"
Yesterday, Kotaku published an investigation about crunches and dismissals in Naughty Dog. Her former employee Jonathan Cooper reacted to this. According to him, almost all experienced specialists really left the studio, which influenced the creation of The Last of Us: Part II.The Last of Us: Part II
Jonathan Cooper is an experienced animator, a native of BioWare and Ubisoft Montreal.
In particular, he was the lead animator of Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 and worked on Assassin’s Creed III.
Cooper has spent the last five years at Naughty Dog. He participated in the creation of Uncharted 4: Thief’s End, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, as well as the future hit The Last of Us: Part II. Cooper left the studio at the end of 2019, because “this is no longer Naughty Dog,” and the animator himself wants to “work with the best of the best.”
He left Naughty Dog not without a scandal. “At the end of last year, they threatened that they would not pay me the last salary until I signed additional documents prohibiting talking about the processes in Naughty Dog. I told them that this must be a court case, and they retreated,” he writes on Twitter.
Cooper’s further words confirmed Jason Schreier‘s information about the problems in Naughty Dog. But the former employee himself warned that he could not speak for all the teams — only for the animators.
The Last of Us: Part IIThe studio crunches, though not all
“To tell the truth, I don’t remember terrible crunches (in our team),” Cooper said. — As far as I know, at the time of my departure, the animators of cut scenes (story animators) worked an average of 46 hours a week. Personally, I’ve never worked more than 55 hours.” According to him, those responsible for the cut scenes in Naughty Dog are very organized and cope with the amount of work.
But this does not mean that other animation teams did not crunch.
“In order to make a demo (The Last of Us: Part II) by September 2019, the gameplay animators experienced the toughest crunch in my memory. It took them weeks to recover. A good friend of mine went to the hospital from overwork,” Cooper laments. — He was recovering for six months. And this happened not only to him.”
The Last of Us: Part IIThere are almost no experienced animators left in the studio
Cooper noticed that completing every aspect of The Last of Us: Part II took an obscenely long time: “A more experienced team would have finished it a year ago.”
The trouble is that such specialists do not want to work at Naughty Dog.
“In Los Angeles, they have heard so much about crunches in the studio that it was simply impossible to hire experienced game animators under contract and close the project. I had to look for animators in the film industry,” explains Cooper. “They are talented, but they lacked the technical/design knowledge to create scenes from the very beginning.”
He immediately made a reservation: “Don’t get me wrong: for the most part, these guys are cool, and the best of them are great fellows. It’s just that when the ratio of experienced and inexperienced team members is wrong, then too much has to be chewed up. It takes more time to study than to work directly.”
The Last of Us: Part IINaughty Dog and Contract work
According to Cooper, contract work is very common in Los Angeles. Thanks to this, local studios make really big games.
“Unlike the field of game design, the field of animation is thriving here,— Cooper writes. — Experienced animators can choose projects for themselves (and often do so).”
That’s why most narrative contract animators quietly quit Naughty Dog last year. These are those who “could not stay in the studio for another 2-3 projects (even with breaks) and, although they are paid overtime, they will never receive the benefits and security that full-time employment brings.”
Meanwhile, Schreier’s sources claim that Naughty Dog has lost 70% of the designers of one of its hits — Uncharted 4. Instead, they hired people who almost defended their diplomas yesterday. Moreover, preference was given to applicants who were ready to work at night.
It turns out that for Naughty Dog, employees are far from the main priority, Cooper concluded.
The Last of Us: Part II”The Last of Us: Part 2 promises to be great, at least in terms of advanced game animation,” he promises.
“But I wouldn’t advise anyone to work at Naughty Dog until the interests (of the employees) become more important to her than anything else.”
Recall that the release of The Last of Us: Part 2 managed to move. It was originally scheduled for February 21, but now the title will be released on May 29. After the publication of Schreier, calls for a boycott of the future novelty appeared in social networks. But, as some users note, a boycott will only make it worse for those who crunched.
Also on the topic:
- The creator of The Last of Us and Uncharted has left Naughty DogLead Last of Us 2 became the vice president of Naughty Dog
- How to create a game character: tips from Blizzard and Naughty Dog
- Is there any news?
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