game directors profile
TRANSCRIPT
Game Directors – Neil Druckmann & Bruce Straley
The two directors oversee the game, co-‐ordinating and managing all the other elements and departments so it all comes together as a whole. They are the ones with the grand vision that everyone is working to. Game Director and Creative Director can be different names for the same job, and often games will only have one through development, but essentially this is the Director of the project, the same way a film has a director. They are the foremost authority on the design and story of the game, so everything has to be approved by them. Game Directors need to have skills in every aspect of game development, as they will be overseeing every department: Programming, Graphic Development, and Writing etc. It’s not a position your hired into, instead you need to work your way up through the company, showing your skills on numerous other games in different departments. ‘The Last Of Us’ had two directors, who came up with the concept of the game together, and the duties of the director were basically split between the two, a Game Director and the Creative Director. Creative Director – Neil Druckmann
Druckmanns’ area is the story and the characters. With this being his area, he also wrote the script for the game, and directed the voice actors in motion capture sessions. So his main input is sort of that of a Film Director, making sure the characters and story and properly presented and brought to life.
Druckmann started out as an intern at Naughty Dog, before slowly working his way up to ‘The Last of Us’. He went from intern to Programmer, and then moved up to the design team on the ‘Uncharted’ games, moving up again to Lead Designer on the second game. Game Director – Bruce Straley
Straley was in charge of the gameplay, the design and the mechanics. So while Druckmann would have been overseeing the voice acting and writing, Straley would have been overseeing the game designers.
Straley worked as an artist at Naughty Dog for many years and many games, before graduating to Art Director on the first ‘Uncharted’ game. He then got his first Game Director gig on ‘Uncharted 2’, before continuing in this role on ‘The Last Of Us’
It seems the use of two Directors is quite uncommon, but it seems it was use here on ‘The Last of Us’, because so much of the focus was on creating a game that mixed story and gameplay together. So it was important to have a director on each, but with both Directors seeing eye-‐to-‐eye and sharing the same vision.