Naughty Dog’s first game sold for $250. Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin were teenagers when the publisher Baudville bought their Apple II skiing game, and their company was then called JAM Software, for “Jason and Andy’s Magic”. Ten years later, nearly broke, they were signed by Universal, and on the drive to Los Angeles they worked out the idea for a 3D platform game. It became Crash Bandicoot, the closest thing Sony’s first PlayStation had to a mascot. The studio has since made a major series for each PlayStation that followed, and in 2013 Edge gave its post-apocalyptic drama The Last of Us ten out of ten.
Fast facts
- Founders: Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin, school friends from the Washington DC area.
- Founded: as JAM Software. The studio dates itself to 1984; Game Informer in 1998 and IGN Unplugged in 2001 gave 1986. It took the name Naughty Dog in 1989.
- Home: Santa Monica, California.
- Owner: Sony Computer Entertainment, since January 2001.
- Series: Crash Bandicoot (1996–1999), Jak and Daxter (2001–2004), Uncharted (2007–2016), The Last of Us (2013–2020).
JAM Software
Gavin and Rubin met in 1982, aged 12, and taught each other to make games on the Apple II+. “I was more technical and he was more artistic,” Gavin told Retro Gamer, “but we were both very motivated and energetic. We used to joke years later that it would be difficult for any would-be third partner to keep up.” Game Informer told the story of their first sale in 1998. Gavin accidentally copied pirated games over the only copy of Rubin’s skiing game, so Rubin wrote a new one, Ski Stud, in a weekend; Gavin made it run faster, and Baudville bought it for “exactly $250.00” and renamed it Ski Crazed. It was not a hit with Family Computing, whose reviewer complained that “all 15 slopes are too easy to navigate”.
The graphic adventure Dream Zone (1988) did better, selling 10,000 copies for Baudville, but the pair found the publisher too relaxed: “poor distribution, minor league resources, and a laid-back approach,” Gavin said. “Jason and I were far too ambitious to stick around in that environment.” They cold-called Electronic Arts. “They asked for our games. We Fedexed them. They called back and offered us a deal!” EA published the fantasy role-playing game Keef the Thief in 1989, the year JAM became Naughty Dog, and then Rings of Power for the Mega Drive. That took three years, with the founders at college in different parts of the country, and EA did not reprint it.
Way of the Warrior
Trip Hawkins’s 3DO brought them back. Given free development kits, they paid for a fighting game themselves, Way of the Warrior (1994). “We changed our whole philosophy with Way,” Gavin said. “Instead of doing the game we most wanted to make, we looked for an intersection between cool, manageable and popular.” Game Informer reported that Naughty Dog “was bankrupt and barely had enough cash to finish it”. Friends played the fighters, filmed against a yellow sheet glued to the wall of the founders’ apartment, in costumes improvised from pillowcases and sheets.
Universal Interactive Studios published the game, and in 1994 it signed Naughty Dog for three more and gave it space on the Universal lot in Los Angeles, under Mark Cerny. “The Universal relationship was a complicated but critical step in our evolution,” Gavin said.
Crash Bandicoot
On the drive to Los Angeles, Gavin and Rubin worked out the idea that became Crash Bandicoot (1996): a character-led platform game in 3D, seen from behind as the hero ran into the screen. They chose the PlayStation because, in Gavin’s words, “Sony … didn’t have a pre-existing ‘mascot’ character.” Gavin and his MIT friend Dave Baggett built the tools, including a programming language for the game’s characters called GOOL, Game Oriented Object LISP. The game’s own entry tells its story.
Sony published it, and two sequels followed a year apart: Cortex Strikes Back (1997), on a rewritten GOOL 2 engine that Game Informer said was three times as fast, and Warped (1998), which Gavin called “just a death sprint”. By October 1998 Game Informer put the series’ sales at more than six million worldwide. Relations with Universal soured. “They stopped paying us … we had to sue them (we eventually won everything),” Gavin told Retro Gamer in 2013. For the kart game Crash Team Racing (1999), the studio’s last Crash, Sony negotiated the rights.
Joining Sony: Jak and Daxter
By 2000 Naughty Dog worked only on PlayStation games, and Sony wanted to own the studio’s next series. The purchase was announced on 22 January 2001. “Naughty Dog picked the Playstation as the winner in the last generation of consoles before the first unit hit shelves,” Gavin said at the time. Rubin thought the studio could have stayed independent, Retro Gamer reported, but under Sony it could concentrate on making games. IGN Unplugged counted “more than 40 people” at the studio that year.
Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy (2001) for the PlayStation 2 swapped Crash’s narrow paths for a large world with no loading screens. “Oh, God. The seamless loading was hard,” Gavin recalled. Edge gave it eight out of ten, finding that it “unashamedly pillages inspiration from the platforming canon” of Mario, Zelda and Banjo-Kazooie yet was “surely the most accomplished of mongrels”. Jak II (2003) went open-world (“We wanted to show that we could go open world with the best of them!”), and Jak 3 followed in 2004. That year the founders’ contracts ended and they left, handing the studio to Evan Wells and Christophe Balestra.
Uncharted and The Last of Us
On the PlayStation 3 the studio turned to cinematic action. Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (2007) introduced the treasure hunter Nathan Drake, and Edge called its sequel, Among Thieves (2009), “the best PS3 action game to date”, with nine out of ten. Visiting the Santa Monica studio for Uncharted 3 in 2011, Edge met the co-presidents Wells and Balestra and the series’ creative director, Amy Hennig.
The Last of Us (2013) followed a smuggler, Joel, and a 14-year-old girl, Ellie, across a United States emptied by a fungal infection. Edge gave it ten out of ten and called it “the most riveting, emotionally resonant story-driven epic of this console generation”. Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End came in 2016 and The Last of Us Part II in 2020; Wireframe’s reviewer found in the sequel “the best (and most) character work that Naughty Dog has produced thus far”.
By its 30th anniversary in 2014 the team of two had become, in the studio’s words, a “two hundred plus studio”. Neil Druckmann, the creative director of The Last of Us, became co-president alongside Wells in December 2020, and in July 2023 Wells announced that he would retire at the end of the year. In December 2024 the studio announced its next game, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.
Sources
- Retro Gamer issue 117, August 2013, pp. 66–71, “From the Archives: Naughty Dog”: Gavin and Rubin’s meeting in 1982; Ski Stud; JAM Software (“Jason and Andy’s Magic”) until 1989; Dream Zone’s 10,000 sales and Baudville; the call to EA; Keef the Thief and Rings of Power; the 3DO and Way of the Warrior; Universal in 1994 and Mark Cerny; the PlayStation and the mascot; the Universal dispute in Gavin’s words; Crash Team Racing; the sale to Sony; Jak and Daxter‘s loading, Jak II, Jak 3; the founders’ departure, Evan Wells and Christophe Balestra.
- Game Informer issue 66, October 1998: Naughty Dog feature (JAM Software in 1986; the overwritten skiing game and Baudville’s $250; Dream Zone in 1988; Keef the Thief in 1989 and the change of name; Rings of Power; Way of the Warrior, the bankruptcy and the yellow sheet; Universal’s three-game deal; Dave Baggett and GOOL; GOOL 2; sales of more than six million).
- Family Computing, March 1988: Ski Crazed review (Baudville, Apple II, “all 15 slopes are too easy to navigate”).
- IGN Unplugged issue 6, September 2001: Naughty Dog at “more than 40 people strong”; founded in 1986 as JAM Software.
- “Sony Acquires Naughty Dog”, Game Developer (then Gamasutra), 22 January 2001 (web, secondary): the purchase and Gavin’s quotation. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/game-platforms/sony-acquires-naughty-dog
- Edge issue 105, Christmas 2001: Jak and Daxter review, eight out of ten.
- Edge issue 208, December 2009, p. 88: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves review, nine out of ten.
- Edge issue 223, January 2011: Uncharted 3 feature (the Santa Monica studio; Wells, Balestra and Amy Hennig).
- Edge issue 255, July 2013, pp. 104–106: The Last of Us review, ten out of ten.
- Wireframe issue 40, June 2020, p. 94: The Last of Us Part II review.
- Eric Monacelli, “Naughty Dog Celebrates 30th Anniversary with New Video, Art Show”, PlayStation Blog, 11 September 2014 (web, secondary). https://blog.playstation.com/archive/2014/09/11/naughty-dog-celebrates-30th-anniversary-new-video-art-show/
- Wikipedia, “Naughty Dog” (web, secondary): the release years of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and Uncharted 4; Neil Druckmann’s promotion in December 2020 (citing GamesIndustry.biz); Evan Wells’s retirement (citing Push Square, July 2023); the announcement of Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet (citing PlayStation Blog, 12 December 2024). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naughty_Dog