Neil Druckmann claims he was misquoted by Sony over ‘redefine gaming’ comment

The Last of Us creative director Neil Druckmann has claimed that quotes attributed to him in a corporate strategy meeting were heavily edited by Sony.

Earlier this week, Sony published an interview with the Naughty Dog designer on its website, in which he was quoted as saying that his next title could “redefine mainstream perceptions of gaming”.

However, Druckmann took to social media on Friday to claim he never made such comments, and published what he claimed to be his unredacted words in full, suggesting that Sony’s version was heavily edited, to the point where context was lost.

The post suggests that Sony removed a line in which the game designer stated that he doesn’t believe “games need to be movies, or… need to be TV shows”.

Although it’s not uncommon for corporate comms teams to edit quotes for clarity and brevity, it’s unusual for the subject of such a comment to publish their original, unedited words.

“In editing my rambling answers in my recent interview with SONY, some of my words, context, and intent were unfortunately lost,” Druckmann wrote. “Well, here’s the full long rambling answer for the final question about our future game”.

Druckmann has danced around the identity of Naughty Dog’s next game during recent interviews.

Last year, he suggested the studio would reveal its next game game closer to its release than has previously been the case, in a bid to combat “work-life balance issues” that arose from announcing what it was working on too soon.

Having previously acknowledged strong fan demand for The Last of Us Part 3, Druckmann recently confirmed that he has a concept for a third game in mind and thinks there will be one more chapter to the story.

However, he’s also spoken about wanting to try new things, and Sony’s willingness to let Naughty Dog do so. He returned to this subject during the new Sony interview.