Old Dog, New Tricks
Uncharted's Richard Lemarchand discusses Naughty Dog's approach to development and its enviable results
Well, it's very important that the team themselves be every good communicators, so when we're hiring at Naughty Dog we're not just looking for skill in art or programming, we're looking for people who are good collaborators, who have the communication skills to work right across the team on whatever.
So the idea of being in other people's business is sort of pivotal to the way we work at Naughty Dog. We've even structured the physical layout of the office to take that into account.
There are very few people who have offices with doors that they can close; they're mainly in pods - like cubicles with very low walls - and we do this deliberately so that, wherever you stand in the office you can see what's on the screens of nearly everyone around you.
And if there's something happening on that screen that you're interested in you should walk over; if, say, an animator is talking to a programmer and you've got something useful to contribute to the conversation then you're encouraged to do so. Again, what it means is you get lots of bright minds looking at the game from lots of different angles all the time, and that's definitely a part of what raises the quality bar.
Yeah. It also gives a feeling of meritocracy about the place - meritocracy in terms of the ideas that are going to thrive. If everyone is freely sharing ideas all the time then the good ideas are going to naturally rise to the surface.
We're more than double in size when you compare Drake's Fortune to Uncharted 3. I'm not actually sure of the precise numbers.
From the very first day of the project we wanted to make a multiplayer game that would be world class. We really wanted to take on the big boys of the multiplayer world.
I think that because we've looked for people who are team players, and because the interviewing process at Naughty Dog is pretty exhaustive, we generally feel like we've found out about folks before they start work. That hasn't been an issue for us, and also because we've been able to hire people and put them straight onto a project that was in full production. That's really helpful - when you can just dive into the work environment as a new hire you very quickly learn how to swim.
Multiplayer is a hugely important part of Uncharted 3, yes. From the very first day of the project we wanted to make a multiplayer game that would be world class. We really wanted to take on the big boys of the multiplayer world.
I hope so. I hope that the visibility of Uncharted 2 means that people are going to come for the terrific, cinematic single player experience but then stay for the multiplayer experience, and because of the depth of content we've put in there's a lot of reasons to stay. And as you say, it's now an important part of everybody's business model going forwards.