Update - February 28: In response to Neil Druckmann's comments on the mental, physical, and time cost of AAA game development, especially in balance with his age, Cory Barlog of Sony Santa Monica's God of War chimed in to say that he's facing a similar question of how long he can keep making games like this.
"Big same, brother," Barlog wrote in a tweet. "Let's just retire and open up a vegan cat cafe exclusively for vegan cats."
Original story:
The Last of Us director and Naughty Dog co-president Neil Druckmann is thinking about how many games he has left to make, and "it's not that many."
As part of an appearance on Logically Speaking, Druckmann talks about his current attitude to working on video games, which you can see below at the 49-minute mark. "I don't see myself doing this forever at this scale," Druckmann says frankly. "It's a lot, and it takes a lot out of you. It's very stressful, to manage that many people in multiple studios worldwide."
The Last of Us director then says he's currently in a similar position to the host, Logic, when it comes to spending time with his kids. "I know that, especially now my daughter is 13, I feel like life is pulling her away from me. I know that time is limited, so it's very precious to me; I don't want to waste it when they do want to spend time with me," Druckmann says.
The Naughty Dog co-president adds that he's been watching plenty of Quentin Tarantino films lately, reflecting on the director's attitude of only making 10 movies and then calling it quits. "I'm very curious whether he sticks to that. I think he will just because he's been saying this for so long," Druckmann says of the director.
"So I could see myself transitioning to something that's more lowkey that still allows me to have a creative outlet. But I've started thinking about how many more of these games I have in me, and it's not that many," Druckmann concludes.
Earlier this week, Sony announced it was laying off 900 workers worldwide, including those of Naughty Dog. Guerrilla Games and Insomniac, both of which are similarly owned by Sony just like Naughty Dog, were also affected by the layoffs. Sony then announced it was canceling unannounced games, although it didn't specify from which studios.
Read up on our upcoming PS5 games guide for a look over all the exclusives coming to Sony's console in the near future.
