PlayStation Beat: Naughty Dog has confirmed the length of The Last of Us at about 12 hours. The question I want to ask – does campaign length still matter?
The story in part 3 of Sony Interactive Entertainment and Naughty Dog's The Last of Us series may explore a "congregation of immune people."
Former Naughty Dog artist Gabriel Betancourt explains why the "sweet spot" for game teams is under 200 people and how AAA "factories" kill creativity.
There’s definitely some truth to this. When teams get too large, coordination starts to outweigh creativity—layers of approval, risk aversion, and tight deadlines can turn bold ideas into “safe” ones. Keeping a team under ~200 people sounds ideal for maintaining clear communication and a shared vision. That said, massive AAA projects also come with huge technical demands and expectations, so scaling up isn’t always avoidable. The real challenge is figuring out how to keep that small-team creativity alive inside big studio structures.
More than that, it's logistically untenable. Inevitably, when teams get too large, how do you keep tabs on accountability? I suspect this massive team size is a consequence of the perfectionism streak Naughty Dog has.
I wish we could have so many people working on something and it turns out great because I'm all for collaboration in spirit - the problem is too many people as part of the larger team and smaller units. Suppose for example that you have too many people in the art department; you will very often come up against fiercely competing visions for how things should look. That competitive vision will cause friction between team members, team doesn't work as a unit, the back and forth can further delay parts that the other departments are waiting for, etc etc.
A 200-person team says, to me, that we need to scale back game development. Even if it means we go back to PS2 era costs and scale, why not? Those games are still great fun, the budgets were in check, and you could literally break the 200-man team into like 10 20-man teams working on different projects.
The Last of Us Part I PS5 review covering visuals, combat feel, accessibility, performance modes, and whether it is really worth the asking price of $69.99.
it probably has to do with the way their mind works. They think that a game must worth the 60 dollars they spend on, and by that they probably mean somewhere along the length of some sandbox titles like Gran Theft Auto. Now, most of this people don't really think of replay values until they have beaten the game, so often times they want to know how much stuff they can do in one playthrough. The more stuff they can cram in one playthrough, the more it seems there is so much stuff to do in the game. Then again, I've played games that lasted me over 30 hours and I thought a lot of it was just fillers and waste of opportunities, and I really hate that because then it feels like you paid 60 dollars to suffer. It's entirely subjective, but people are always trying to convert it into a standard and that's really dumb. Sometimes I want a f**king 3 hour game even if it meant spending 60 dollars for it. In the end, what matters to me is the game, not the length.