Bruce Straley, co-director and co-creator of The Last of Us — the unique, 2013 PlayStation 3 sport — shouldn’t be talked about within the credit for the brand new HBO TV adaptation, which aired its first episode this week. His co-director Neil Druckmann, nonetheless, who’s actively concerned within the show as its govt producer and co-creator (with TV showrunner Craig Mazin), additionally will get a point out as the author of the unique. “Based on the PlayStation Studios video game created by Naughty Dog and written by Neil Druckmann,” the on-screen credit reads.
Straley, it appears, isn’t too blissful about this end result. Although his major duty on the sport was gameplay whereas Druckmann’s was script and story, the pair have repeatedly mentioned that they created the world and the storyline of The Last of Us collectively. But, when requested about his lack of credit by The L.A. Times, Straley selected his phrases — and his targets — rigorously.
“It’s an argument for unionization that someone who was part of the co-creation of that world and those characters isn’t getting a credit or a nickel for the work they put into it,” Straley mentioned. “Maybe we need unions in the video game industry to be able to protect creators.”
It’s maybe an unlikely remark from somebody who was a senior developer at Naughty Dog, a studio with an unhealthy fame for crunch. But Straley has had lots of time to replicate on that. Straley left Naughty Dog in 2017 after 18 years with the studio, following an apparently sad expertise making Uncharted 4. He and Druckmann had inherited that mission from Uncharted creator Amy Hennig after her departure from the studio, and the accelerated improvement time on a sport he wasn’t personally invested in left him feeling burned out.
The L.A Times characterizes Straley’s relationship with Sony and Naughty Dog as “strained”. But the importance of Straley’s remark shouldn’t be that it factors to a private beef with Druckmann or anybody else at Naughty Dog. Rather, it highlights how little possession anybody working in video video games really has over their work. In the extensively unionized TV and movie business, credit is jealously guarded and strictly regulated, however in video games, it’s straightforward for Sony to assert full possession and carve a key inventive like Straley out of a licensing deal.
Straley’s feedback come at a time when unionization is a sizzling subject within the sport business, with an growing quantity of studios’ workforces selecting to unionize. Perhaps Wildflower Interactive, the brand new impartial studio Straley shaped final 12 months, will be part of their ranks.
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