WEBVTT - The Naughty Dog Story Part Two 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:07.200 Get in text with technology with tech Stuff from half 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:13.800 staff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:17.280 I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer 0:00:17.360 --> 0:00:20.080 here at how Stuff Works, and I love all things 0:00:20.079 --> 0:00:23.840 tech and we are going to continue the story about 0:00:24.000 --> 0:00:27.640 Naughty Dog Games. When we left off in our last episode, 0:00:28.040 --> 0:00:31.760 the game studio had just shipped Crash Bandicoot and that 0:00:31.880 --> 0:00:36.520 was their first title for the brand new Sony PlayStation console. 0:00:36.800 --> 0:00:39.199 And it was also a bold move to try and 0:00:39.520 --> 0:00:43.959 sneak in and create a de facto mascot for the company. Now, 0:00:44.040 --> 0:00:48.160 due to the complicated intellectual property ownership status, Crash would 0:00:48.159 --> 0:00:53.400 never become an official mascot of PlayStation, partly because Universal 0:00:53.479 --> 0:00:57.440 Studios had a stake in the property. Universal Studios had 0:00:57.480 --> 0:00:59.760 made a deal with Naughty Dog a few years earlier 0:00:59.800 --> 0:01:03.080 to develop three games together, and Crash Bandicoot was the 0:01:03.120 --> 0:01:06.120 first of those three. But there's no question that Sony 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:09.840 was able to take advantage of crashes innovative gameplay design 0:01:09.959 --> 0:01:14.640 and the you know, no nonsense attitude that the little 0:01:14.680 --> 0:01:17.600 creator gave off in promotional materials. Actually it was more 0:01:17.640 --> 0:01:22.119 like all nonsense, all the time attitude. It was nineties attitude, 0:01:22.520 --> 0:01:25.759 which is probably the most irritating attitude ever. I lived 0:01:25.760 --> 0:01:27.920 through it. I know what I'm talking about. Well. In 0:01:27.959 --> 0:01:31.640 the thirtieth anniversary documentary that was based on Naughty Dog 0:01:31.760 --> 0:01:33.960 is a great documentary. It's available on YouTube. I I 0:01:34.040 --> 0:01:37.000 highly recommend checking it out. Andy Gavin said that the 0:01:37.040 --> 0:01:41.720 success of Crash Bandicoot exceeded their expectations, even though everything 0:01:41.760 --> 0:01:45.800 went quote exactly as according to plan end quote. So 0:01:45.840 --> 0:01:48.000 in other words, the team had set out to make 0:01:48.040 --> 0:01:51.440 a successful game with a protagonist that gamers would connect with, 0:01:51.840 --> 0:01:53.840 but they didn't expect it to take off the way 0:01:53.880 --> 0:01:56.560 it did. The development process had been a grueling one. 0:01:56.600 --> 0:01:58.840 If you listen to the last episode, you know about that. 0:01:59.240 --> 0:02:01.840 Most of the folks on staff were young and single, 0:02:02.320 --> 0:02:05.200 and so they spent long hours in the office, sometimes 0:02:05.200 --> 0:02:07.200 not even going home in order to get the game 0:02:07.280 --> 0:02:10.480 to ship on time. And people worked every single day 0:02:10.480 --> 0:02:14.360 of the week, including holidays. It was already time for 0:02:14.400 --> 0:02:16.520 them to get back to work on Crash two though, 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:18.640 for the next project, so they couldn't really take any 0:02:18.680 --> 0:02:22.160 time to appreciate what they had done. According to Jason Rubin, 0:02:22.280 --> 0:02:24.840 one of the two co founders of the company. He 0:02:24.919 --> 0:02:30.079 worked three hundred sixty four days in He only missed 0:02:30.200 --> 0:02:32.840 one day that whole year, and that was because he 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:35.400 had a cold so bad he could not come into work. 0:02:35.720 --> 0:02:38.520 He said he believed that Andy Gavin, his fellow co founder, 0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:42.120 had actually worked every single day that year for an 0:02:42.160 --> 0:02:45.360 average of sixteen hours a day. That would remain true 0:02:45.400 --> 0:02:47.919 throughout the process of creating all three of the Crash 0:02:47.960 --> 0:02:51.519 Bandicoo games, and that took its toll on both of 0:02:51.560 --> 0:02:54.960 the founders, not to mention everybody else in the company. 0:02:55.120 --> 0:02:58.680 The two sequels are called Crash Bandicoot to Cortex Strikes 0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:02.920 Back and Crash Bandicoot Warped. According to the founders, the 0:03:02.960 --> 0:03:05.760 team went from one crunch time on producing a game 0:03:06.200 --> 0:03:09.520 directly into the other, and then into another. It was 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:12.720 an exhausting slog to get through everything. They also hired 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:15.880 on more people to join the team, so each game 0:03:15.919 --> 0:03:18.920 took a little less time but more people to complete. 0:03:19.160 --> 0:03:21.680 The business of developing games was going through an evolution 0:03:21.720 --> 0:03:24.440 at this stage. So in the early days of computer games, 0:03:24.440 --> 0:03:27.320 you could be a generalist, or perhaps you could specialize 0:03:27.320 --> 0:03:31.080 in one very large general area such as game engine 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:35.280 development or game art and That's exactly how Andy Gavin 0:03:35.320 --> 0:03:38.040 and Jason Rubin had been working together. Gavin did all 0:03:38.080 --> 0:03:41.000 the major programming and Reuben did all the art in 0:03:41.040 --> 0:03:44.680 their early games. But at this point, game development was 0:03:44.720 --> 0:03:48.560 starting to get more complicated and required people with narrower 0:03:48.640 --> 0:03:52.560 but hyper developed set of skills, so things like lighting 0:03:52.720 --> 0:03:57.200 and shading stuff that took very specific abilities. You couldn't 0:03:57.240 --> 0:03:58.960 just be an artist and do it all. You really 0:03:58.960 --> 0:04:02.040 had to have people who focused just on one aspect 0:04:02.040 --> 0:04:05.200 of the game. With each Crash Bandicoot game, the development 0:04:05.240 --> 0:04:09.119 team grew. Crash three marked the final game produced through 0:04:09.120 --> 0:04:12.600 this partnership between Naughty Dog and Universal Studios. Now they 0:04:12.600 --> 0:04:15.680 had initially agreed to produce those three games as part 0:04:15.720 --> 0:04:19.240 of the deal, and that number had now been reached 0:04:19.279 --> 0:04:24.360 and the relationship had actually soured quite a bit over time. Initially, 0:04:24.800 --> 0:04:28.120 Universal had provided the resources that Naughty Dog needed to 0:04:28.240 --> 0:04:31.320 develop games on a larger scale than what they had 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:34.080 been doing, which was that two man operation of Jason 0:04:34.120 --> 0:04:37.640 Rubin and Andy Gavin. But by Crash three, things have 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:42.120 changed significantly. According to Jason Rubin, Universal's part in Naughty 0:04:42.160 --> 0:04:45.839 Dog's operations had dwindled to almost nothing when it came 0:04:45.880 --> 0:04:49.839 to day to day operations, Sony was providing the money 0:04:49.839 --> 0:04:52.960 for development and production of titles. The team at Naughty 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:56.080 Dog was doing all the work, and even their executive 0:04:56.080 --> 0:05:00.760 producer Mark Sarney, who had originally worked with Universal Studios, 0:05:01.200 --> 0:05:04.640 had left Universal and now was working with Naughty Dog 0:05:04.720 --> 0:05:08.880 as an independent contractor. So Reuben said that Universal wasn't 0:05:08.880 --> 0:05:12.760 really doing anything at all except cashing checks because they 0:05:12.839 --> 0:05:16.840 owned the intellectual property of Crash Bandicoot. This rubbed Ruben 0:05:16.920 --> 0:05:19.559 and many others at Naughty Dog the wrong way. They said, 0:05:19.760 --> 0:05:22.880 why should the developers split so much of their money 0:05:23.360 --> 0:05:27.000 with a company that's not really doing anything to provide 0:05:27.040 --> 0:05:30.000 for the success of our titles. Jason Ruben said in 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:33.480 an interview with Games Industry Dot biz that he and 0:05:33.480 --> 0:05:37.120 Andy had decided not to renew the agreement with Universal 0:05:37.160 --> 0:05:41.039 Interactive while the team was still working on Crash three, 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:44.800 so they hadn't even finished, uh delivering the game that 0:05:44.880 --> 0:05:48.160 would conclude the agreement when they had said, you know what, 0:05:48.240 --> 0:05:50.840 we're not gonna do this again. He said they were 0:05:50.920 --> 0:05:54.000 unwilling to split that revenue with Universal, and he also 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:56.800 said that the it was it was just getting really 0:05:56.880 --> 0:06:00.520 hard to deal with people at Universal is increasingly difficult 0:06:00.520 --> 0:06:03.279 to work with executives there, and they were making it 0:06:03.320 --> 0:06:06.080 a habit of taking credit for success of the Crash 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:09.359 Bandicoot series, even though no one at Universal had really 0:06:09.400 --> 0:06:12.200 had a role to play in the later development of 0:06:12.240 --> 0:06:15.040 those games. According to Reuben, he and his team were 0:06:15.080 --> 0:06:19.960 moved into temporary spaces in the hallways at Universal Studios 0:06:20.000 --> 0:06:23.200 as offices. They couldn't be turned out in the street 0:06:23.760 --> 0:06:27.080 because the deal that Naughty Dog had signed with Universal 0:06:27.279 --> 0:06:30.840 guaranteed them work space in return for developing the three 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:34.599 Crash Bandicoot games, But Ruben said the folks at Universal 0:06:34.720 --> 0:06:37.599 made sure that things were not easy or pleasant for 0:06:37.720 --> 0:06:40.440 Naughty Dog once it was clear they weren't going to 0:06:40.480 --> 0:06:44.119 renew their arrangement. Reuben said they even had to Jerry 0:06:44.160 --> 0:06:47.920 Riggan air conditioner for their servers because Universal would turn 0:06:47.920 --> 0:06:50.600 off the A C in the evenings. Their workspace was 0:06:50.640 --> 0:06:53.680 on the thirty fourth floor of a building and they 0:06:53.720 --> 0:06:56.440 were told they could not bring in portable A C 0:06:56.760 --> 0:06:59.440 units into the hall. They were concerned not just for 0:06:59.480 --> 0:07:02.000 their own for it, but for their servers that were 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:05.279 getting up to a hundred thirty degrees fahrenheit so they 0:07:05.320 --> 0:07:08.160 decided they would do their best. They rigged up a 0:07:08.200 --> 0:07:12.480 bucket of ice and a fan, a regular oscillating fan 0:07:12.600 --> 0:07:15.880 to blow air over the ice and cool their servers 0:07:15.920 --> 0:07:19.320 down so that they didn't go critical. Eventually, they were 0:07:19.360 --> 0:07:22.120 able to sneak in a portable a C unit up 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:26.240 to their space, disguised as a small refrigerator. The day 0:07:26.280 --> 0:07:30.440 the team handed off Crash three, they left the Universal lot. 0:07:30.520 --> 0:07:33.360 They did not waste time. They relocated to a new 0:07:33.400 --> 0:07:37.640 headquarters in Santa Monica, California, and they got to work 0:07:37.840 --> 0:07:42.200 on a cart racing game. Jason Rubin said that the 0:07:42.240 --> 0:07:46.000 initial thought was games were going to become more cinematic, 0:07:46.200 --> 0:07:49.320 They were going to incorporate live action sequences, and they 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:52.080 were going to require the talents cultivated by the film 0:07:52.120 --> 0:07:55.840 industry in particular. Full motion video was still a thing 0:07:56.200 --> 0:07:59.400 at this point and had not quite become the joke 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:03.520 many people associate with it these days, and so they 0:08:03.600 --> 0:08:06.360 chose to stay close to Los Angeles, thinking they would 0:08:06.360 --> 0:08:09.720 be really close to all of those assets, rather than 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:14.240 relocate to a place like San Francisco or Austin, Texas. Now, 0:08:14.240 --> 0:08:18.960 according to Ruben, that decision ended up having advantages and disadvantages. 0:08:19.320 --> 0:08:22.440 The big disadvantage was that these other cities, you know, 0:08:22.480 --> 0:08:25.520 San Francisco in Austin in particular, had a lot more 0:08:25.640 --> 0:08:28.600 game development studios in them, and it was a lot 0:08:28.640 --> 0:08:32.720 easier to attract talent to a studio because there was 0:08:32.960 --> 0:08:36.679 already a culture there. Los Angeles didn't have that many 0:08:36.840 --> 0:08:40.080 game development studios, so it was harder to attract talent. 0:08:40.320 --> 0:08:43.240 But by being a big player in a town that 0:08:43.320 --> 0:08:46.760 did not have many game development studios, Naughty Dog could 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:50.320 more easily hold onto the talent it cultivated. So once 0:08:50.360 --> 0:08:54.679 they got someone, they weren't likely to easily leave the company. 0:08:54.800 --> 0:08:57.840 There there wasn't the likelihood of another company coming in 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:00.600 and sniping out an employee out from under Naughty Dog 0:09:01.640 --> 0:09:04.280 because they weren't in the same town. Naughty Dog then 0:09:04.320 --> 0:09:07.800 reached out to Sony and said, hey, we have a 0:09:07.840 --> 0:09:10.800 game we're working on. It's right now, a bunch of 0:09:10.840 --> 0:09:15.959 nondescriptive people on these go kart like racers. But we'd 0:09:16.000 --> 0:09:19.520 really love to make this a crash bandicoot racing game. 0:09:20.000 --> 0:09:22.679 Only there's a problem. See, we are not all We're 0:09:22.679 --> 0:09:26.160 not gonna talk to anyone over at Universal. We kind 0:09:26.160 --> 0:09:28.280 of hate their guts and they kind of hate our 0:09:28.320 --> 0:09:31.400 guts and we don't want to deal with that. So, 0:09:31.800 --> 0:09:35.760 because Universal owns the intellectual property for crash Bandicoot, if 0:09:35.800 --> 0:09:37.840 we want to make this a crash Bandicoot game, could 0:09:37.880 --> 0:09:41.200 you guys over at Sony go to Universal and work 0:09:41.240 --> 0:09:45.000 things out for us? And Sony said sure, and they 0:09:45.080 --> 0:09:48.120 jumped in and they negotiated the rights to use Crash 0:09:48.160 --> 0:09:52.960 Bandicoots intellectual property and create this racing cart game, Crash 0:09:53.040 --> 0:09:57.600 Team Racing. So that was Naughty Dog's first post Universal game, 0:09:57.880 --> 0:10:01.559 the Crash Bandicoot Crash Team Racing cart game for the PlayStation, 0:10:01.600 --> 0:10:05.560 which came out in now. As most of the team 0:10:05.559 --> 0:10:09.200 focused on building out Crash Team Racing, Andy Gavin began 0:10:09.240 --> 0:10:12.400 to work with Stephen White and Mark Sarney to plan 0:10:12.559 --> 0:10:14.920 for a new game engine to run on top of 0:10:14.960 --> 0:10:18.720 the next generation of Sony hardware. The PlayStation two was 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:21.480 poised to come out in the spring of two thousand 0:10:21.760 --> 0:10:24.040 and Gavin wanted to make sure that Naughty Dog was 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:27.520 ready to transition to develop games for this new hardware. 0:10:27.840 --> 0:10:31.360 They also wanted to create an all new intellectual property 0:10:31.400 --> 0:10:34.839 title that would be under the control of Naughty Dog itself. 0:10:35.320 --> 0:10:38.320 So while they were no longer a small, scrappy independent 0:10:38.400 --> 0:10:40.600 developer the way they had been in the eighties and 0:10:40.640 --> 0:10:44.200 early nineties, they were determined to chart their course as 0:10:44.240 --> 0:10:47.439 if they still were a very small team. The intellectual 0:10:47.440 --> 0:10:50.120 property would turn into a series of games featuring a 0:10:50.160 --> 0:10:55.520 pair of protagonists named Jack and Daxter. As for Crash, 0:10:55.720 --> 0:11:00.640 that i P would remain with Universal. Eventually, the Vendi Universal, 0:11:00.960 --> 0:11:05.520 which evolved from Universal Interactive, would merge with another company, 0:11:05.559 --> 0:11:09.320 that being Activision, and the rights to Crash Bandicoot ultimately 0:11:09.320 --> 0:11:12.200 would pass to this new merged company. There have been 0:11:12.520 --> 0:11:16.520 twenty games to feature Crash Bandicoot as either the main 0:11:16.559 --> 0:11:20.640 protagonist or a playable character. Only four out the twenty 0:11:20.720 --> 0:11:24.079 were actually developed by Naughty Dog Game Studio. The goal 0:11:24.200 --> 0:11:27.000 Naughty Dog had with Jack and Daxter wasn't just to 0:11:27.040 --> 0:11:29.880 make a new franchise. It was to push their approach 0:11:29.920 --> 0:11:33.360 to game development and try to incorporate more story and 0:11:33.400 --> 0:11:36.640 plot into an adventure game. That had been the original 0:11:36.640 --> 0:11:40.000 intent for Crash Bandicoot, but the team found out while 0:11:40.040 --> 0:11:42.880 they were developing it for the PlayStation that the limitations 0:11:42.880 --> 0:11:46.480 of that console made it impractical, if not impossible, to 0:11:46.559 --> 0:11:49.959 develop such an ambitious style of game, so they had 0:11:50.040 --> 0:11:53.200 high hopes that the PlayStation two would be up to snuff. 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:56.000 The company also took it on faith that they would 0:11:56.000 --> 0:11:59.360 works out, you know, a publishing deal with Sony somewhere 0:11:59.400 --> 0:12:02.760 down the line, so they were concentrating on building Jack 0:12:02.800 --> 0:12:06.000 and Daxter and left all that contract stuff for later. 0:12:06.160 --> 0:12:08.120 So I actually started building a game before there was 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:11.440 any ink signed to have that game published, which is 0:12:11.480 --> 0:12:14.079 sort of a repeat of how Gavin and Rubin had 0:12:14.120 --> 0:12:17.320 made Way of the Warrior a few years earlier. That 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:20.079 was the game that got them the initial deal with Universal, 0:12:20.559 --> 0:12:24.400 and Naughty Dog was making decent money from Crash bandicoot royalties, 0:12:24.679 --> 0:12:28.240 so there weren't as many economic pressures in play as 0:12:28.320 --> 0:12:32.439 there could have been. At this stage, Jason Reuben instituted 0:12:32.520 --> 0:12:35.880 a new rule at naughty Dog. Development had reached a 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:39.440 point where multiple people would be working on the same assets, 0:12:39.760 --> 0:12:43.400 so you would have multiple people creating a single character, 0:12:43.559 --> 0:12:46.959 for example. But naughty Dogs policy up to this point 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:48.760 was to allow people to kind of come in at 0:12:48.880 --> 0:12:51.720 different times things that were suitable to their own schedules. 0:12:51.960 --> 0:12:55.160 So some folks would pull a twelve hour day starting 0:12:55.160 --> 0:12:58.080 from six am, going to six pm. Others were still 0:12:58.120 --> 0:13:00.680 pulling a twelve hour day, but they started four pm 0:13:00.720 --> 0:13:03.880 and they clock out it four am. Now, Ruben saw 0:13:03.960 --> 0:13:06.760 this as a problem. It meant that people who were 0:13:06.840 --> 0:13:10.560 handling the same assets in the game had very little 0:13:10.600 --> 0:13:13.200 time to actually work together because some of them would 0:13:13.240 --> 0:13:16.480 come in two hours before the other person was leaving. 0:13:16.520 --> 0:13:20.480 It really limited any sort of collaboration, so he created 0:13:20.520 --> 0:13:23.480 a policy in which all Naughty Dog employees were required 0:13:23.520 --> 0:13:27.040 to be at the company for several core hours. The 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:30.920 reaction from employees was less than enthusiastic. In fact, two 0:13:30.960 --> 0:13:34.640 team members left after those changes took effect. However, they 0:13:34.640 --> 0:13:38.400 would eventually become industry standards across the video game world. 0:13:38.679 --> 0:13:41.320 Ruben and Gavin had also noted the effect of all 0:13:41.360 --> 0:13:44.600 that work was taking its toll on their employees. People 0:13:44.640 --> 0:13:48.319 had families now, so they weren't as eager to spend 0:13:48.720 --> 0:13:52.280 day after day working eighteen hours at the office, and 0:13:52.320 --> 0:13:55.880 they were getting tired, and so they created another new policy. 0:13:56.000 --> 0:13:59.400 At the end of every project, everyone would get a 0:13:59.480 --> 0:14:03.440 month vacation. Effectively, the company would shut down for a 0:14:03.559 --> 0:14:06.000 full month and then as soon as you got back, 0:14:06.040 --> 0:14:07.640 you have to go right back into work. On the 0:14:07.679 --> 0:14:11.480 next project. However, this policy did not cover the co 0:14:11.679 --> 0:14:15.720 founders Reuben and Gavin, because they would continue holding meetings 0:14:15.720 --> 0:14:18.920 and giving interviews during that month hiatus. In other words, 0:14:19.280 --> 0:14:22.880 they didn't stop working. Back to Jack and Dexter, Naughty 0:14:22.920 --> 0:14:25.880 Dog wanted an action adventure game in which as much 0:14:25.880 --> 0:14:28.440 of the story could be incorporated directly into the game 0:14:28.480 --> 0:14:32.000 as possible. They also wanted a large, open world environment 0:14:32.160 --> 0:14:35.840 without having any long loading times between zones, so that 0:14:35.920 --> 0:14:37.880 you could walk from one side to the other and 0:14:37.920 --> 0:14:40.920 you would never have an annoying loading screen. In the end, 0:14:40.920 --> 0:14:43.440 they were able to create cut scenes to insert into 0:14:43.480 --> 0:14:46.200 the action and advance the story, but they found it 0:14:46.240 --> 0:14:50.040 difficult to integrate plot and action more seamlessly. It was 0:14:50.080 --> 0:14:52.840 a step beyond what crash Bandicoot could do, but it 0:14:52.880 --> 0:14:56.400 was still far short of what their end goal was now. 0:14:56.440 --> 0:14:59.160 The title characters are Jack, which is kind of a 0:14:59.640 --> 0:15:03.120 young and an elf like creature who serves as the 0:15:03.160 --> 0:15:06.560 playable character for the first game, and Daxter, who used 0:15:06.560 --> 0:15:08.840 to be another young elf like creature but then got 0:15:08.840 --> 0:15:13.600 turned into a critter called an otsul, part otter, part weasel, 0:15:13.840 --> 0:15:17.280 and he's often the comic relief in the games Jack 0:15:17.320 --> 0:15:21.240 and Daxter, the precursor Legacy, launched in two thousand one. 0:15:21.640 --> 0:15:25.240 The following year, two thousand two, Andy Gavin and Jason 0:15:25.320 --> 0:15:28.840 Rubin made a big decision. They decided that they were 0:15:28.880 --> 0:15:31.600 going to sell the company to Sony and that they 0:15:31.600 --> 0:15:35.760 would retire from their leadership roles. I'll talk more about 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:39.080 that decision in just a moment, but first let's take 0:15:39.120 --> 0:15:49.600 a quick break to thank our sponsor. The co founder's 0:15:49.680 --> 0:15:52.880 decision to retire didn't exactly come out of the blue. 0:15:53.040 --> 0:15:55.360 Jason Rubin has said that he and Andy Gavin were 0:15:55.360 --> 0:15:58.160 at a nightclub in Tokyo with a couple of other people, 0:15:58.240 --> 0:16:01.960 including Kelly Flock, and Kelly was the head of Sony's 0:16:02.040 --> 0:16:04.240 game division in the United States at the time, and 0:16:04.280 --> 0:16:07.000 Flock had said that Naughty Dog was effectively at the 0:16:07.040 --> 0:16:10.840 top of the video game business, which sadly meant it 0:16:10.920 --> 0:16:15.120 had nowhere to go but down, and that just meant 0:16:15.120 --> 0:16:17.320 that there was no way to climb higher than the top. 0:16:17.480 --> 0:16:19.280 When you're at the top, that's where you can be. 0:16:19.600 --> 0:16:21.000 You can try and stay on the top as long 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:24.680 as you can, but eventually you're gonna go down if 0:16:24.760 --> 0:16:29.000 things don't, you know, consistently evolved, and Garrety Rubin began 0:16:29.040 --> 0:16:31.760 to give thought to selling the company because the idea 0:16:31.800 --> 0:16:34.760 of having to keep reinventing the company over and over 0:16:34.800 --> 0:16:38.720 in order to maintain that top spot when they hadn't 0:16:38.720 --> 0:16:42.720 had a vacation in years seemed a little too overwhelming. 0:16:42.920 --> 0:16:45.960 But even then, when they started thinking about the possibility 0:16:45.960 --> 0:16:48.280 of selling the company, it didn't happen right away. When 0:16:48.320 --> 0:16:51.160 the first Jack and Daxter game went live, the whole 0:16:51.160 --> 0:16:53.960 company went on vacation except for the two co founders, 0:16:54.120 --> 0:16:56.760 who continued to work, but the grind really was getting 0:16:56.800 --> 0:16:59.720 to them. The company was nervous about how their new 0:16:59.760 --> 0:17:02.520 game was going to be received, because really they had 0:17:02.520 --> 0:17:06.040 been known for Crash Bandicoot at this point would they 0:17:06.160 --> 0:17:10.440 actually find acceptance with Jack and Daxter. Fortunately, the game 0:17:10.480 --> 0:17:13.560 got good reviews and sales were doing quite well, so 0:17:13.920 --> 0:17:17.479 when everyone came back a month later, they immediately launched 0:17:17.520 --> 0:17:21.720 into developing the sequel to Jack and Daxter, conveniently titled 0:17:21.840 --> 0:17:24.879 Jack two. By two thousand two, Gavin and Rubin had 0:17:24.920 --> 0:17:27.360 decided it was a good time to change things up. 0:17:27.400 --> 0:17:29.480 They wanted to sell the company. They were going to 0:17:29.520 --> 0:17:32.040 sell it to Sony. It would become a wholly owned 0:17:32.119 --> 0:17:35.800 subsidiary of Sony Entertainment, and then they were going to 0:17:35.840 --> 0:17:38.800 step away from the company. But they didn't plan to 0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:42.240 just abandon Naughty Dog with no warnings, so instead they 0:17:42.280 --> 0:17:45.399 drew up a two year transition plan in which they 0:17:45.400 --> 0:17:50.119 would both gradually handoff duties and responsibilities to their chosen successors, 0:17:50.640 --> 0:17:52.920 and at the end of that in two thousand four, 0:17:53.240 --> 0:17:55.760 they would complete the handoff and then they could go 0:17:55.840 --> 0:17:59.840 and right off into the sunset, virtually speaking. Now, a 0:17:59.840 --> 0:18:04.000 lot changed between those first two Jack and Dexter games. 0:18:04.000 --> 0:18:06.480 The second game had a more serious tone and a 0:18:06.480 --> 0:18:10.160 different approach to navigating the world and progressing through the story. 0:18:10.320 --> 0:18:12.920 Behind the scenes, people at Naughty Dog weren't really sure 0:18:13.000 --> 0:18:15.760 what the future would bring. There were some worries about 0:18:15.840 --> 0:18:19.159 how the transition with Ruben and Gavin stepping away, how 0:18:19.160 --> 0:18:21.919 that could affect work, not to mention how an acquisition 0:18:21.920 --> 0:18:25.000 could change things. Would the company be able to maintain 0:18:25.160 --> 0:18:29.320 its philosophy and work culture, or which things changed so 0:18:29.400 --> 0:18:32.600 dramatically when Sony took charge that it wouldn't even be 0:18:32.680 --> 0:18:36.679 the same company anymore. That two year plan helped settle 0:18:36.760 --> 0:18:40.280 fears quite a bit. Ruben and Gavin began grooming Evan 0:18:40.320 --> 0:18:44.120 Wells and Stephen White to take over the leadership positions 0:18:44.119 --> 0:18:48.240 at Naughty Dog. They would effectively be co presidents. Gradually, 0:18:48.520 --> 0:18:51.440 Ruben and Gavin stepped back from their roles, with Wells 0:18:51.560 --> 0:18:54.840 and White taking on more of those responsibilities as time 0:18:54.880 --> 0:18:57.480 went on. This would often be cited as one of 0:18:57.520 --> 0:19:01.560 the more successful executive transitions in any industry, let alone 0:19:01.600 --> 0:19:05.040 in the video game industry. Eventually, Evan Wells and Stephen 0:19:05.040 --> 0:19:07.840 White would become co presidents of the company, and Andy 0:19:07.880 --> 0:19:11.000 Gavin and Jason Jason Rubin left Naughty Dog in October 0:19:11.040 --> 0:19:13.680 two thousand four. That was the same year that Jack 0:19:13.840 --> 0:19:17.639 three came out. Stephen White would end up leaving the 0:19:17.640 --> 0:19:21.080 company a few years later, and a programmer named Christoph 0:19:21.240 --> 0:19:26.199 Blestra took over as the new co president alongside Evan Wells. 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:29.040 At that point. That was around two thousand seven. Jumping 0:19:29.080 --> 0:19:32.360 back just a bit. While much of the team transitioned 0:19:32.359 --> 0:19:35.400 to work on a racing title for Jack and Daxter 0:19:35.960 --> 0:19:38.919 that would come out in two thousand five, another early 0:19:39.040 --> 0:19:43.399 project began to take form. They had a creative writer 0:19:43.840 --> 0:19:47.440 on staff named Amy Hennig who had joined naughty Dog 0:19:47.480 --> 0:19:50.840 after working in the video games industry since nineteen nine, 0:19:50.880 --> 0:19:53.199 so she had had more than a decade's worth of 0:19:53.280 --> 0:19:57.120 experience in the world already, and she had a concept 0:19:57.200 --> 0:19:58.919 for a new game that she felt would be a 0:19:58.920 --> 0:20:03.000 good fit for the next generation of consoles. The PlayStation 0:20:03.040 --> 0:20:06.639 three was not set to launch until November two thousand six, 0:20:07.240 --> 0:20:09.600 but Hennig believed that Naughty Dog needed to start to 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:12.199 focus on something that could be a defining game for 0:20:12.280 --> 0:20:16.040 that new console. Hennig started by striking off things on 0:20:16.040 --> 0:20:18.880 the list she did not want to make. She did 0:20:18.880 --> 0:20:22.119 not want to go with a dark, gritty, first person 0:20:22.600 --> 0:20:25.840 style games set in a post apocalyptic world. She said 0:20:25.840 --> 0:20:28.159 there were already other games that were doing that. She 0:20:28.200 --> 0:20:31.000 didn't want the game to be super serious, but she 0:20:31.119 --> 0:20:34.359 also did not want to create a game that was 0:20:34.480 --> 0:20:38.479 cartoonish that featured animated characters jumping all around the screen, 0:20:39.000 --> 0:20:42.080 and considering that Jack and Daxter and Crash Bandicoot kind 0:20:42.119 --> 0:20:44.400 of fell into that category, this would mean a big 0:20:44.440 --> 0:20:47.600 departure for naughty Dog. What she wanted to do was 0:20:47.680 --> 0:20:52.320 create a game that had realistic graphics, compelling animation, really 0:20:52.359 --> 0:20:55.640 great acting, both from the voice over actors, and from 0:20:55.720 --> 0:21:00.080 the in game characters themselves and great action sequences, and 0:21:00.119 --> 0:21:02.320 it also just had to be fun to play, not 0:21:03.040 --> 0:21:06.720 dour and depressing. The closest analog to what she had 0:21:06.720 --> 0:21:09.359 in mind was tomb Raider, but at that time the 0:21:09.359 --> 0:21:12.920 tomb Raider franchise had sort of faded into the background. 0:21:13.119 --> 0:21:16.879 Hinnigg's project had a code name, Project Big. It wasn't 0:21:16.880 --> 0:21:19.919 called anything particular because they were still deciding what it 0:21:19.960 --> 0:21:22.639 was going to be. It turned out that Project Big 0:21:22.800 --> 0:21:25.320 was a bit of an understatement. Not only had Hennig 0:21:25.359 --> 0:21:27.760 and her team not yet figured out what form it 0:21:27.840 --> 0:21:29.720 was going to take, they were also going to have 0:21:29.760 --> 0:21:33.040 to program a game for an all new console that 0:21:33.119 --> 0:21:38.440 had a drastically different microchip architecture. The PlayStation three had 0:21:38.480 --> 0:21:41.480 a lot of power at its disposal, but it also 0:21:41.680 --> 0:21:46.200 was not designed like earlier iterations of the PlayStation. Developers, 0:21:46.240 --> 0:21:49.560 not just Naughty Dog developers, but throughout the entire industry 0:21:49.920 --> 0:21:53.600 found it challenging to build games for this new console. 0:21:53.640 --> 0:21:56.919 At first, Naughty Dog was not alone in this. It 0:21:57.000 --> 0:22:01.640 was all uncharted territory. And yeah, I made that same 0:22:01.720 --> 0:22:03.720 joke in the last episode, but I'm making it again 0:22:03.800 --> 0:22:07.080 now because Project Big would of course, evolve into the 0:22:07.160 --> 0:22:11.239 hit game series Uncharted. One of the earliest ideas they 0:22:11.280 --> 0:22:13.920 played with was to create a game set in an 0:22:14.040 --> 0:22:19.119 underwater complex with underwater mechanics and physics and all sorts 0:22:19.160 --> 0:22:22.680 of cool ideas, but ultimately they felt like this setting 0:22:23.040 --> 0:22:25.840 wasn't really in line with what the company did best. 0:22:25.920 --> 0:22:29.480 They thought going with something that was so clustrophobic probably 0:22:29.640 --> 0:22:32.200 wasn't going to end up being fun, so they decided 0:22:32.240 --> 0:22:35.560 to explore other ideas, and later on they were really 0:22:35.600 --> 0:22:39.320 thankful that they changed direction because when Bioshot came out, 0:22:39.840 --> 0:22:43.840 they realized that that game was really incredible and probably 0:22:43.920 --> 0:22:47.400 better than what they would have done given a similar setting, 0:22:47.560 --> 0:22:50.080 so they were kind of glad they had decided not 0:22:50.200 --> 0:22:52.719 to go down that route, even though they had developed 0:22:52.720 --> 0:22:55.800