Naughty Dog teases "something big" as its hiring spree continues

Naughty Dog is looking to fill dozens of positions as it continues work on "something big," as animation director Jeremy Yates teased amidst the studio's latest hiring push. 

At the time of writing, Naughty Dog has roughly five dozen open positions on its careers page. Yates' comment is especially pertinent as the studio's animation department has more open positions than most, beating out art, audio, production, and others. 

The listings include permanent and temporary positions on single-player and multiplayer teams, but specifics are scarce. That said, the Last of Us and Uncharted developer has been aggressively staffing up for some time, and we know it's actively working on at least one big project: The Last of Us Factions. The multiplayer spinoff mode was previously cut from The Last of Us 2 but is now in development as a standalone mode – a first for Naughty Dog, which has always attached multiplayer to games that primarily lean on their campaigns. 

Late last month, Naughty Dog was back in its motion capture studio according to a brief update from senior cinematic animator Marianne Hayden (the studio has several openings in its cinematic team as well). 

All or most of this growth and work is believed to be tied to The Last of Us Factions, in part because co-president Evan Wells previously explained that while Naughty Dog generally has multiple projects in the works, it also focuses on one big thing at a time. 

"We have one [project] and then some that are in pre-production, or maybe just creeping out of pre-production, but will have to wait until the main focus has completed before we move everybody off of that project," he clarified earlier this year. 

Uncharted fans recently spotted a seasonally appropriate Easter egg in The Last of Us: Left Behind.