Two new job postings spotted by website VGC shows that Naughty Dog is currently hiring developers to come work on “the studio’s first standalone multiplayer game!”
Naughty Dog has been arguably PlayStation’s top studio for many years now, (though Insomniac seems to be catching up) and there has been plenty of speculation as to where the company will go next now that The Last of Us Part II has been out now for almost a year. Rumours have speculated that there is in fact another remake in the works for The Last of Us along with an Uncharted remake planned to come afterwards, but two job postings give us a much clearer idea of what is actually going on within Naughty Dog.
The listings are for a gameplay scripter and for a level designer, and it’s within the description that the news of a standalone multiplayer game is revealed. The listing reads “Embark on Naughty Dog’s newest adventure – the studio’s first standalone multiplayer game! We’re seeking to bring the same level of ambition and quality of our signature, story-driven games to this unique multiplayer project.”
On the surface this could really seem like a massive pivot from what Naughty Dog’s usual bread and butter is, but it actually does make quite a lot of sense when you consider their history. Uncharted 2 and Uncharted 3 both had multiplayer modes which were widely popular at the time, and The Last of Us‘s multiplayer mode Factions still has players populating servers even now. It’s in fact very likely that the multiplayer game they are hiring for is a Factions follow up for The Last of Us Part II. They’ve previously pledged to release it, though there has been no word yet as to when that will in fact happen.
While this remains purely speculative, it is an interesting notion to think that Naughty Dog could even potentially be considering a multiplayer focused IP sometime in the future. Considering the size, scale and quality of their single player experiences and the success of their multiplayer experiments in the past, it would be great to see what they could do if they decided to create their own multiplayer title not tied to any of their other IP’s.
