The Last of Us co-director Bruce Straley explains why he left Naughty Dog 8 years ago

“When you’re at the starting line of a marathon, you’re like ‘This is awesome! I’m going to race a marathon!’” Straley tells Polygon. “And then you’re a couple miles in and you’re like ‘What the fuck did I do!?’”

Straley is no stranger to a marathon. Prior to founding Wildflower Interactive in 2021, he spent nearly two decades building Naughty Dog into the juggernaut video game studio it is today. During that time, he served as a director on the company’s most pivotal games, including Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and The Last of Us (alongside Neil Druckmann). Just as he was far ahead in first place, Straley suddenly left the company in 2017 — three years before The Last of Us Part 2 helped transform the series he co-created into a mainstream pop-culture phenomenon. Why spend all that time chasing glory, only to leave it all behind and start over?

In his first interview since leaving Naughty Dog, Straley explained why he quit nearly a decade ago. There were several reasons, but the crux of it came down to a kind of creative stagnation that was antithetical to his philosophy as a creator.

“I had been there 18 years. That’s a long time for anybody to be anywhere,” Straley says. “I think I played a very integral role in building that brand up and those titles, and I had a really amazing experience with those teams. But I felt like I was answering the same questions over and over again. We were kind of in this paradigm of this style of game — that I was part of creating! But it felt like I’ve been in this position before. My brain isn’t good with that type of repetition. I need new problems to solve, I need new creative outlets. I’m not saying there wouldn’t be opportunities there, but couple that feeling with the idea that I was working really, really hard at something that wasn’t mine.”

Straley’s need to try new things has always been inseparable from his success. While the style of cinematic action game he helped pioneer at Naughty Dog has become an industry standard now in 2025, that wasn’t always the case. The now-foundational action-adventure games he directed there were born from the same kind of thinking that would eventually set the stage for his exit.

“For Uncharted 2, it was like, could I create the playable action summer blockbuster?” Straley says. “At the time in 2007, every big epic setpiece was in a cutscene. And for me it was like, what the fuck are we doing? We’re called an interactive medium! Why aren’t we making that playable? For Uncharted 2, we wanted to push that. For The Last of Us, it was like, can we create more character stakes and make it more personal? If we had a collapsing building, could we make it mean something to someone? It didn’t really mean anything to Drake, it was just a big setpiece. There’s always this question I’m asking, which is how do we do something different? Why are we doing it if it’s going to be the same thing that you’ve already played?”

Straley was at the right place at the right time as someone seeking answers to those big questions. The mid- to late-2000s were a turning point for big-budget games, as creators were eager to push boundaries of storytelling in blockbusters. Games like Bioshock helped change the perception of what a video game narrative could accomplish by subverting the medium. Straley cites Gears of War as an especially pivotal game that pulled off the kind of feat he was hoping to accomplish back then.

“The best point of Gears of War is when you fight this uphill stairs battle in Marcus Phoenix's old house. And they’re in cover and they’re like ‘I don’t know if I can fucking do this.’ That was the best part, when it became emotional and personal. Fuck yeah! Let’s get real! War’s hard! These creatures keep popping out of everywhere, fuck!” Straley says. “So when it came to The Last of Us, it wasn’t just can we make it more personal. It was, can we take a horror story and make it feel like you care about those characters in a horrific survival setting? For me, it’s this evolution of: How can I just take something from a different angle and create a fresh perspective on a genre that’s been well-trodden? And if I’m not doing that… I just don’t have it in me. I would make a lot more money if I did!”

While Naughty Dog was a place where Straley could ask those questions for nearly 20 years, he eventually hit a creative wall. Between 2007 and 2016, he worked on three Uncharted games, The Last of Us, and its Left Behind DLC. The studio had clearly found a style of action-adventure game that worked and was committed to making more games in that vein, leading the industry by example. That locked Straley, a creator who thrives on evolution, in a stalemate.

“When it came time to think about either staying at Naughty Dog or leaving, it was like, where else do I go?” Straley says. “Naughty Dog is literally the pinnacle of a style of game, and I really enjoyed making and playing that style of game. I wasn’t going to go to another AAA studio to make a first-person shooter or puzzle-platformer. It just didn’t feel like I was going to go somewhere else. Then I would have to deal with a whole different bureaucratic or cultural system, so that was already an answer for me. Okay, I can’t go somewhere else.”

Straley came to accept that he had to make a move. He felt that he had said what he wanted to say in AAA games and was at peace with his accomplishments. There was also a business consideration: Though he was in a place where he could push video games forward at a high level, he was still just a piece of a gigantic IP machine that was ultimately owned by Sony.

“It really comes down to: Do you want to continue working for someone else and put in all the effort to build an IP, to build characters, to build things that a franchise could be built out of?” he says. “I got paid very well there, I got some appreciation there, but it felt like it was time to break out and try it on my own. It felt like it was time to evolve my concepts and build a new team. It might fail miserably, but I thought that it was at least my failure based on my choice.”

After taking a break following Uncharted 4’s release in 2016, Straley parted ways with Naughty Dog in 2017. He published a blog entry on the studio’s website at the time explaining his decision, and noting that he had “found my energy focusing in other directions.” He didn’t speak to the press at the time and seemed to quietly exit the industry almost entirely.

Though he’d spend the next three years out of gaming’s spotlight — all while Naughty Dog was gearing up to release its biggest game yet, The Last of Us Part 2 — Straley still had an idea for a game that kept following him. He was thinking about the innovative way Uncharted and The Last of Us handled companion characters. What if he could make someone like Ellie even more reactive? He was curious enough about the thought that he began prototyping an idea in 2020, even though he still wasn’t sure what he wanted his next creative move to be.

“I started with one guy who wanted to learn how to design, and I didn’t know if I wanted to make a game again,” he says. “So I thought that it was a perfect idea. Maybe I can help him learn about design, and then he can help prototype and see if there’s any validity to this idea. And there was! We stood something up pretty quickly, and pretty immediately it was like, there’s something here. Now, there’s also the siren’s lure of the prototype. It’s a lot easier to stand it up and imagine how cool it’s going to be than actually finish it!”

That prototype would eventually set the stage for Coven of the Chicken Foot, Straley’s first project since 2016’s Uncharted 4. The game stars an elderly witch who enlists the help of a forest creature to help her fulfill her oath to a coven. The open-ended experience is built around a companion character who is capable of observing players’ actions, mimicking them, and eventually learning the logic behind what they’re doing. Visually, it’s a far cry from the cinematic hyperrealism of Naughty Dog’s games, but it’s still very much an evolution of what they do on a technical level.

To bring the idea to life, Straley created his own independent studio: Wildflower Interactive, a small team made up of 16 people in total, 12 of whom are developers. Straley expected that it would be a scrappy outfit that would work faster than the traditional AAA system. Instead, he quickly found that it would still take time to build the right creative culture to carry out his vision. Straley credits Journey designer Jenova Chen for helping him steer Wildflower in the right direction by asking him an important question: “Do you want to make a game or do you want to build a team?”

For the past few years, Straley hasn’t just been working on Coven of the Chicken Foot, but dealing with the challenges of creating a new remote studio in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. He describes it as a rollercoaster, but one in which every team member has fully committed to the vision because they believe in evolving the industry. When I ask him what’s different about working in a studio of that scale versus Naughty Dog, he sums it up in one word: “Everything.”

“There’s no room for slop,” Straley says. “Every decision you make is going to make or break the scope of the game and what our runway is for keeping this team alive. Everything that goes into either the company or the game takes from something else… Everything is different — and good! I like the challenge! I asked for this! But no matter how many indie devs you hear from that say it’s really hard in the indie world, I’m telling you, it’s really hard in the indie world!

As challenging as the change has been, Straley is excited about what Wildflower is building with Coven of the Chicken Foot. He believes in the project, though he’s still hyper-aware of the stakes. After all, this is the guy who directed some of the most influential video games of the modern era.

“I’m scared shitless!” he says. “There’s a lot riding on this for me. Call it ego, reputation, legacy bullshit, whatever it is, but the fact that every day we show up and there’s something new that makes us laugh and you get excited, I just can’t wait for people to play this. It’s something unique that’s going to last the test of time. It’s not something that you need to do a remaster of in the next four years because the tech has already outgrown it.”

It’s hard not to read that last part as a dig on his former employer, whether subconscious or not. In the years since Straley left Naughty Dog, the studio has released four games: The Last of Us Part 2, a remake of The Last of Us, a remaster of The Last of Us Part 2, and a collection of remastered Uncharted games. Though the studio is now currently at work on something entirely new with the Neil Druckmann-led Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, it has spent the past eight years circling the same ideas — the very kind of thinking that Straley needed to break out from in 2017.

At the end of our conversation, I come back to a word Straley used earlier: legacy. It’s something he can’t escape. Even Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 4 remaster puts the label on him, thanks to its inclusion in the Legacy of Thieves Collection. Straley is still hyper aware of his legacy — of course he is. But Wildflower Interactive is a chance for him to let go of his ego and continue doing the thing he does best: pushing forward.

“The things that I thought I was bringing with me from Naughty Dog, I also had to learn that not everything is helpful,” Straley says. “It feels like an evolution, in that you have to shed a skin. There’s dirt and grime, and I’ve outgrown it in such a way that it has to get peeled off and you have to become a new snake. And the human experience for me is showing up and not getting caught up in my head, or projecting what you’re going to think about this game. That’s fear! And if I’m in a fear-based mindset, I can’t be creative.

“Legacy is bullshit. The concept that I care at all about what everybody thinks about me is just nothing but a trap, and it’s going to affect everything I do and say. It’s the worst position any person could be in, honestly.”