Former Naughty Dog designer Benson Russell has explained how the developer eventually began to believe workplace crunch was necessary to make games like The Last of Us at its “level.”
Russell left the Sony studio in 2015 after eight years of working on games like The Last of Us and Uncharted, and now, he’s opened up about his experiences in an interview with Kiwi Talkz. One talking point to have emerged from the conversation revolved around the company’s long history with crunch, which he said, “from Uncharted 1, only got worse.”
He clarified that Naughty Dog leadership “tried to fix it” at some point in the early 2010s by implementing guidelines that kept employees from working past midnight. However, he said, “When push came to shove, that midnight rule went right out the window.”
After The Last Of Us shipped, Naughty Dog made the admission that crunch is a requirement to make games at the level they make them and they would no longer even attempt to shy away from it.
That’s why crunch has progressively gotten worse with every project since and that’s why… pic.twitter.com/Ge8TVdwcQv
— Reece “Kiwi Talkz” Reilly (@kiwitalkz) April 13, 2026
“Every meeting after that was always like, ‘Hey, what are we going to do to try and mitigate crunch? How are we going to make this better?'” Russell said. “And eventually it was just an admission in the meeting. It was like, ‘Well, we’ve just come to realize this is what it takes to make games at our level, and we understand, if you don’t want to do that, that’s fine. We understand. We’ll write you a great letter of recommendation.’ That was the answer.”
He added: “The company runs the way it wants to run. You either want to be a part of it, or you don’t. They’re not technically breaking any laws, and it’s not like a requirement, it is a ‘Hey, we really could use your help, please come here,’ and you’re incentivized to do it because your bonuses will be bigger.”
Russell also spoke about the retention rate at Naughty Dog, recalling that “some people left” during the development of Uncharted 4, and then, around the time of The Last of Us Part 2, “they really started leaving.” The timing of Russell’s departure places him in the first camp, with the fourth mainline Nathan Drake game having launched the following year in 2016.
Elsewhere in the interview, he said the part of the reason for his exit was that he “didn’t see a promotable future,” but crunch culture at Naughty Dog also had its role to play, too. Some examples of the latter he shared included an increase in long workdays and weekend workdays, sometimes totaling in “multiple months of seven-day weeks” and 12-to-14-hour days.
“We had flex hours, where it’s like, you had to be between this time and this time, minimum, so those are core hours so people can overlap, and then you manage that however you need to. The problem is crunch comes in, and then it’s like, all bets are off,” Russell said. “On The Last of Us, I had to drastically cut my crunch time down. I still put in a lot, right? I ramped it up over time, over the last year and a half or so, of the project.”
Naughty Dog has made headlines multiple times in the last few months as players eagerly await its highly anticipated big-budget sci-fi adventure, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. The excitement surrounding the project is something Sony is all too aware of, with a Bloomberg report sharing late last year that the company had required employees at the game studio to work a minimum of eight extra hours per week in order to meet an internal deadline.
Meanwhile, rumors that Naughty Dog may be working on The Last of Us Part 3 started swirling following a potential tease late last month. Another post from a member of the team has some fans thinking an Uncharted 5 may be on the way, too.
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
