Naughty Dog – Best Developer 2013
No other experience felt as refined, polished, or purposeful in 2013 as The Last of Us and it’s a testament to the caliber of work Naughty Dog can do with support from Sony. Sure, the studio behind Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter, and Uncharted have clearly established a AAA-sized niche in highly cinematic, story-driven experiences, but The Last of Us still felt like it stepped out of the shadow cast by the studio’s biggest franchises.
The Last of Us pushed for more interactivity, with some sequences forcing Naughty Dog to abandon its tried-and-true motion capture cinematics for interactivity, for meaningfully playable, less-than-scripted sequences. Without spoiling anything, I’m not sure any other studio could have presented the final sequence in The Last of Us in quite the same way, but Joel and Ellie’s final hours meant more to us just for the control we had over necessary violence and lingering questions.
Runners Up:
- Nintendo
- Irrational Games
- Rockstar North
- Capcom
