software 1984 89 type subsidiary of sony interactive entertainment industry video games founded september 27 1984 founder andy gavin jason rubin headquarters santa monica california united states key people evan wells co president christophe balestra co president neil druckmann creative director bruce straley game director products crash bandicoot jak and daxter uncharted the last of us services video game development number of employees 200 500 1 parent independent 1984 2000 sony interactive entertainment america 2001 present website www.naughtydog.com naughty dog inc. formerly jam software before renaming in 1989 2 3 4 is an american video game developer based in santa monica california . 5 founded by andy gavin and jason rubin in 1984 as an independent developer 3 the studio was acquired by sony computer entertainment in 2001 . gavin and rubin produced a sequence of progressively more successful games including rings of power and way of the warrior in the early 1990s . the latter a very low budget but still plausible offering prompted universal interactive studios to sign the duo to a three title contract and fund the expansion of the company . longtime american game designer and producer mark cerny convinced naughty dog to focus its new resources on creating a character based platform game that would fully exploit the 3d capabilities of the new systems . ultimately this led to the release of crash bandicoot for the playstation in 1996 . naughty dog developed three crash bandicoot sequels over the next several years . after developing crash team racing the company began working on jak and daxter for the playstation 2 . in 2004 rubin who had become the company s president left the company to work on a new project named iron and the maiden . 6 7 in addition to their inhouse game team naughty dog is also home to the ice team 8 one of sie worldwide studios s central technology groups . 9 the company s first playstation 3 title uncharted drake s fortune was released in 2007 with the series tetralogy being completed by 2016 . naughty dog was known for having a history of developing one game at a time and also one franchise per console ; a controversial trend that was criticized by fans . 10 this lasted until naughty dog announced a new intellectual property for the playstation 3 in 2011 called the last of us which was in development by a secondary team at the studio and was released in 2013 to universal acclaim being called one of the greatest games of all time . contents 1 company overview 2 development philosophy 2.1 ice team 3 games developed 4 partnerships with other developers 4.1 insomniac games 4.2 ready at dawn 4.3 high impact games 5 awards 6 references 7 external links company overview edit the original logo used for naughty dog high school students jason rubin and andy gavin having experimented with lisp and c teamed up to create video games and founded jam software in 1984 . citation needed rubin and gavin chose to create software for the apple ii and decided to create a skiing game for their second title . during production of the game gavin accidentally copied bootleg games over the only copy of the skiing game they had . rubin then created a new skiing game called ski crazed originally titled ski stud within the weekend . because the game played slowly gavin reprogrammed the game to play quicker . the game was later picked up and published by baudville who bought the game from jam software for 250 . rubin and gavin created an apple iigs graphic adventure game titled dream zone which was released in 1988 and ported to the atari st amiga and personal computer . 11 in 1989 rubin and gavin released a game titled keef the thief which was published by electronic arts for the apple iigs amiga and ibm pc compatible . to make a fresh start and to dissolve their relationship with baudville rubin and gavin renamed jam software as naughty dog on september 9 1989 . 12 naughty dog also created and developed rings of power which was published by electronic arts for the sega genesis in 1991 . rubin and gavin were joined on the title by programmer vijay pande who would later become better known for orchestrating the distributed computing disease researching project known as folding home at stanford university . 13 14 in 1994 rubin and gavin produced the 3do interactive multiplayer title way of the warrior and presented it to mark cerny of universal interactive studios . cerny was pleased with way of the warrior and signed naughty dog on to universal interactive studios for three additional games . citation needed rubin and gavin devised a plan to create a three dimensional action platform game . citation needed because the player would be forced to constantly look at the character s rear the game was jokingly codenamed sonic s ass game . citation needed production of the game began in 1994 during which naughty dog expanded its number of employees and invented a development tool called goal oriented object lisp to create the characters and gameplay . citation needed cartoonists charles zembillas and joe pearson were recruited to create the characters of the game which resulted in the titular character crash bandicoot . after 14 months of development the game was shown to sony computer entertainment who then signed on to publish the game . crash bandicoot was shown to the public for the first time at e3 and went on to become one of the highest selling titles for the playstation console selling over 6.8 million copies . 11 naughty dog continued to develop two more crash bandicoot games with a spin off crash team racing kart racing game . by then the studio was looking to develop games for sony and not be constrained by universal interactive . since universal held the rights to the crash bandicoot series naughty dog could not develop future games in its own right . the studio would be bought out by sony to avoid a repeat while it focused on developing the first game of the jak and daxter series . citation needed the jak and daxter games met similar success as the crash bandicoot games . during the development of jak 3 and jak x combat racing games rubin and gavin slowly transitioned evan wells and christophe balestra to become co presidents of naughty dog by the time the founders left the studio . citation needed starting in 2007 naughty dog began worked on the uncharted series and made their first approach to realistic worlds and characters in contrast to their crash bandicoot and jak and daxter series which featured fantastical worlds set in a fictional setting . the uncharted franchise has been praised for its cinematic quality and technical proficiency and has sold nearly 17 million copies worldwide as of april 2012 . 15 during the 2011 spike tv video game awards naughty dog unveiled a new intellectual property the last of us described as a post apocalyptic third person action adventure game following the plight of a teenage girl ellie and her adult protector joel in a post apocalyptic united states overrun with humans infected with a disease reminiscent of the infection caused by cordyceps unilateralis . the last of us received universal acclaim upon release . 16 in 2012 and 2013 naughty dog teamed with mass media inc. to release the jak and daxter collection . the collection contains high definition ports of the original playstation 2 trilogy and was released for playstation 3 and playstation vita respectively . damon shelton of naughty dog presents on the motion capture technique used in the last of us at gdc 2015 on november 14 2013 during the ps4 all access launch event on spike naughty dog revealed two teaser trailers . the first unveils the last of us single player dlc a first for naughty dog left behind starring ellie and riley a girl that she met during the events of the american dreams prequel comic series . the second teaser revealed the studio s first playstation 4 title the next installment of uncharted making the series their first ip to sprawl across two home console generations excluding hd remakes . on november 23 2013 corrinne yu principal engine architect at microsoft s halo 4 developer 343 industries announced that she had joined naughty dog . 17 on december 7 2013 during the first edition of spike s vgx award show naughty dog won the studio of the year award for their work on the last of us . 18 on march 4 2014 uncharted lead writer amy hennig left the studio 19 with uncharted 3 director justin richmond and the last of us lead artist nate wells leaving soon after . later it was revealed that the last of us would be released on the playstation 4 as a remastered version . citation needed development philosophy edit naughty dog is known for its unique way of handling game development as the studio doesn t have a producer in either of their teams . 20 the work culture at naughty dog is very different to many other studios ; there is less middle management ; the studio s lead effects artist keith guerrette said it comes with a lot of pros and cons but i think it definitely is one of our biggest strengths . looking around at the rest of the industry and this is something that we do talk about quite a bit the companies that are doing really innovative cool things are all the ones that don t have the management like the business side directly injected into the company . sony s put us in this fantastic situation where we don t have any producers ; we don t have any interactions with sony corporate at all on the development . 20 naughty dog has also complete freedom in basically every aspect of game design and that also means that sony computer entertainment the parent company doesn t prevent the studio from any implementation of game elements . citation needed ice team edit naughty dog is home to the ice team one of sony s world wide studios central technology groups . the term ice originally stands for initiative for a common engine which describes the original purpose of the studio . 8 the ice team focuses on creating core graphics technologies for sony s worldwide first party published titles including low level game engine components graphics processing pipelines supporting tools and graphics profiling and debugging tools . the ice team also supports third party developers with a suite of engine components and a graphics analysis profiling and debugging tool for the rsx . both enable developers to get better performance out of playstation hardwares . 21 22 games developed edit main article list of naughty dog video games as a subsidiary of sony computer entertainment naughty dog are best known for developing games for the playstation family of consoles including the crash bandicoot series for the original playstation jak and daxter on playstation 2 and uncharted and the last of us on playstation 3 and playstation 4 . prior to this they also developed games including dream zone keef the thief rings of power and way of the warrior . partnerships with other developers edit insomniac games edit since working together in the same building on the universal interactive studios backlot naughty dog and insomniac games have had a close relationship . producer mark cerny has worked extensively with both companies . they have made similar types of games . for example in the late 1990s naughty dog s crash bandicoot series and insomniac s spyro the dragon series both competed on the playstation as character heavy platforming games with imaginative environments . with the release of the playstation 2 the two series were left