Cory Barlog, creative director at Sony Santa Monica Studio, and Neil Druckmann, studio head and head of creative of the video game developer Naughty Dog, had a remarkable unscripted conversation at the Dice Summit about their approaches to creativity.
They’re among the most success creators in the game industry, and so it was worth listening to their hour-long talk before hundreds of their peers.
Barlog was creative director on God of War, which won the Game of the Year Award in 2018 at The Game Awards and the Dice Awards. He also produced the sequel God of War: Ragnarök in 2022. He worked on numerous God of War games from 2005 and also worked on Tomb Raider.
Druckmann is known for his work on the Uncharted series and The Last of Us and The Last of Us: Part 2 and The Last of Us: Left Behind. He’s also working on the new Sony game Interstellar, and also worked on the Jak series. He adapted The Last of Us with Craig Mazin for TV on HBO. And he has won many awards.
In the conversation, Druckmann said Naughty Dog has a process and by following it, the result has usually been success. That means he has let go of more and more of the creative work and embraced the talents of his team. Barlog’s approach seemed more chaotic and when creation wasn’t going well he could feel it as a kind of “physical” reaction — a kind of gut instinct. He has a voice inside his head that expresses doubt, and that he “sucks.” He works to make that doubt go away. Barlog relies on his instinct to tell him when he has the right answer.
Druckmann said he envies that, as more often than not his instinct leads him astray. In casting Laura Bailey for The Last of Us: Part 2, he almost went with his gut feeling of choosing a different actor. But he methodically reviewed the auditions and found Bailey’s emotional performance was perfect.
And Druckmann said the key is to “trust the process.” The team will work on it, put all of the ideas on the board and iterate on it. Then Druckmann has to decide on the direction for the team to follow. It’s a process that is unpredictable, but it has paid off over and over again. Barlog asked if it was sustainable.
Druckmann acknowledged that schedules and budgets affect the creative process. He noted that Naughty Dog works faster when it has an external deadline, like the need to complete a trailer for a show. The schedule forces the team to make decisions on the best work they can do in a given time. When there are internal deadlines, it’s more likely that a schedule slip can happen as the team iterates on its ideas.
“I need the schedule. I don’t really like the schedule. I hate the schedule. But I need it. The team needs it as well, because–it’s not unique to me. It’s just Naughty Dog. We’re perfectionists. Without it we would just keep iterating,” Druckmann said.
If there’s ever a way to inspire anyone about the magic of game design creativity, this was the session.
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