Neil Druckmann
Neil Druckmann is an Israeli–American writer, creative director, designer, and programmer. He is the studio head and head of creative of the video game developer Naughty Dog, and is best known for his work on the game franchises Uncharted and The Last of Us, having co-created the latter as well as its television adaptation.
Druckmann's first video game work came as an intern at Naughty Dog. In 2004, he became a programmer on Jak 3 and Jak X: Combat Racing, before becoming a designer for Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. He was co-lead game designer for Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, which he co-wrote with Amy Hennig and Josh Scherr; the narrative was praised and received several accolades. He has also written comics, including the motion comic Uncharted: Eye of Indra and the graphic novels A Second Chance at Sarah and The Last of Us: American Dreams.
Druckmann co-led the development of The Last of Us and Uncharted 4: A Thief's End as writer and creative director, co-writing the latter with Scherr. He was promoted to vice president of Naughty Dog in 2018 while directing The Last of Us Part II, co-written with Halley Gross. He became co-president in 2020, head of creative in 2023, and studio head in 2024. Druckmann co-created and wrote the television adaptation of The Last of Us with Craig Mazin and directed several episodes. He is the director of the upcoming game Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet and co-writer with Claire Carré.
He earned praise for his writing and directing work on The Last of Us, Uncharted 4, and The Last of Us Part II, which are often regarded among the best-written and greatest video games ever made. Druckmann has received several awards, including three British Academy Games Awards, four D.I.C.E. Awards, two Game Awards, three Game Developers Choice Awards, and four Writers Guild of America Awards.
Early life
Neil Druckmann was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, on December 5, 1978, into a Jewish family, the son of Yehudit and Jerry Ilan Druckmann. Druckmann's family lived in Ramat Aviv until 1981, when they moved to Beit Aryeh, a settlement in the West Bank which largely consisted of employees of Israel Aerospace Industries, including Druckmann's father, a flight test engineer. His grandparents lived in Haifa and Tel Aviv. Druckmann recalled violence was a frequent topic on the news and in conversations at home. As an escape, his older brother Emanuel introduced him to comic books, video games, and movies at a young age, such as Pong. These forms of entertainment, particularly video games by Sierra Entertainment and LucasArts, helped him learn English. He became interested in storytelling and wrote his own comic books.Druckmann moved to the United States with his family in 1989, attending middle school and high school in Miami, Florida. He began to study a criminology major at Florida State University, aiming to get experience as an FBI agent to use when writing thriller novels. His brother snuck him into E3 in the late 1990s, and he attended the conference again in 1998, 2000, and 2002, as well as SIGGRAPH in 2002 and 2003. As an FSU student in 2001, he won a Conker's Bad Fur Day multiplayer competition organized by Nintendo and Playboy. While studying, he worked as a clerk at My Favorite Muffin and a salesman at PacSun. From July 2002, while living in Tallahassee, Druckmann spent a year as a graphics research assistant at FSU's Visualization Lab. During this time, he and some friends began developing the game Pink-Bullet for Linux and Windows. At one point, he wanted to be an animator, which required enlisting in art classes, but his parents forbade him from doing so.
Druckmann realized programming was his preference after taking a class, and he began a Bachelor of Computer Science with a minor in math in December 2002, graduating cum laude the following year with a grade point average of 3.61. Due to his academic results, he was a member of the Golden Key Honor Society. He moved to Pittsburgh, where he attended Carnegie Mellon University, and began his master's degree in entertainment technology in August 2003 at the Entertainment Technology Center. He took a game design class by Jesse Schell, which taught him philosophies about positive impacts of games he would later use, and a virtual worlds course by Randy Pausch, which taught him to become more collaborative. Druckmann worked as a visual effects artist for a friend's team around this time. In April 2004, he and Allan Blomquist developed the game Dikki Painguin in: TKO for the Third Reich for the Nintendo Entertainment System as students at Carnegie Mellon.
Career
Intern and programmer (2003–2005)
One of Druckmann's professors paid for him to attend the Game Developers Conference in 2003, where he attended a presentation by Naughty Dog co-founder Jason Rubin. After Druckmann "bugged" Rubin, the latter gave him his business card. Some time later, Rubin contacted Druckmann and offered him an intern position, a first for Naughty Dog. By the time Druckmann responded, the position had been taken. When encouraged to apply for internships by CMU, Druckmann reached out to Rubin for advice and was told about a new internship at the studio. He was put in contact with game director Evan Wells, who offered him the internship after an interview at GDC. During this time, he had also been offered an intern producer position at Electronic Arts on The Sims 2; he extended the offer in order to attend Wells's interview. Druckmann joined Naughty Dog as a programming intern around May 2004. He began working on localization tools and gameplay programming on Jak 3. During this time, he offered assistance with additional design tasks. By the end of the internship in August, he was offered a full-time position by Wells and Stephen White, then co-presidents. He received credit for the second year of his master's degree through his work at Naughty Dog, earning the degree in 2005. He programmed the menu screens on Jak X: Combat Racing, which he considered one of the most difficult tasks of his career, and continued to assist with smaller design tasks where possible.Designer and writer (2005–2009)
During the development of Jak 3 and Jak X, Druckmann continually asked Wells about joining the design team. Wells restrained from transferring him, as he was originally employed as a programmer and lacked design experience, but agreed to review Druckmann's work if he completed them in his spare time. Druckmann iterated on several level designs with Wells's feedback, initially on graph paper and later using Adobe Illustrator. Following the development of Jak X, Wells concluded that Druckmann was skilled in design and gave him a design position for Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier. Several months into development, Wells transferred Druckmann to work as a game designer on Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, which was facing development troubles; High Impact Games took over work on The Lost Frontier, which was released in 2009. In his position as game designer on Drake's Fortune, he worked closely with Amy Hennig to construct the story, before working on Uncharted 2: Among Thieves as a lead game designer, becoming more involved with the core writing.In 2009, Druckmann worked on the motion comic Uncharted: Eye of Indra as writer and director. Eye of Indra tells the story of Nathan Drake prior to the events of Drake's Fortune. Druckmann's first graphic novel, A Second Chance at Sarah, was published by Ape Entertainment in February 2010. With illustrations by artist Joysuke Wong, the novel relates Druckmann's interest in traveling back in time to meet his wife at a younger age, an idea he found "cute and poetic". He felt he shared many similarities with the protagonist, Johnny, and noted "a lot of Johnny's flaws and fears are based on own shortcomings". Critics particularly praised Wong's illustrations and Druckmann's writing and character development.
Creative director (2010–2018)
Following the development of Uncharted 2, Naughty Dog split into two teams to work on projects concurrently. With one team working on Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, co-presidents Evan Wells and Christophe Balestra chose Druckmann and Bruce Straley to lead development on a new game; Druckmann was chosen for his determination and talent for design. Though they were originally set to develop a new game in the Jak and Daxter series, the team felt that they "weren't doing service to the fans", and decided to create a new game, titled The Last of Us. Druckmann was promoted to the game's creative director around a year into production.For The Last of Us, Druckmann used a concept he created as a student at Carnegie Mellon: to merge the gameplay of Ico, the setting of Night of the Living Dead, and the lead character of Sin City. The protagonist would be tasked with protecting a young girl, but players would often assume control of the young girl, reversing the roles. He based The Last of Us on this concept, replacing the protagonist with Joel and naming the young girl Ellie. Druckmann intended The Last of Us to be "rooted firmly within reality", a departure from Naughty Dog's previous "light and loose" feeling. He took acting classes to better communicate with actors while directing. The game was released on June 14, 2013, with praise for Druckmann's work on the story. He earned numerous awards, including a BAFTA, D.I.C.E. Award, Game Developers Choice Award, Golden Joystick Award, and Writers Guild of America Award. The Last of Us is often regarded one of the best-written video games and one of the greatest video games ever made.
Druckmann later worked on a downloadable expansion pack, The Last of Us: Left Behind, a prequel focusing on Ellie's relationship with her friend Riley, which received in February 2014 to critical acclaim. He earned additional accolades for his work on Left Behind, including a second BAFTA and Writers Guild of America Award. In particular, he was praised for writing a scene involving a kiss between two female characters, which was named a "breakthrough moment" for video games. He also co-wrote the four-issue comic book miniseries The Last of Us: American Dreams with co-writer and artist Faith Erin Hicks. It was published by Dark Horse Comics, with the first issue released in April 2013, and was lauded for Druckmann's writing and character development. In March 2014, Sony announced that Druckmann was writing a film adaptation of The Last of Us, produced by Sam Raimi and distributed by Screen Gems. By January 2015, he had written the script's second draft, and performed a read-through with some actors. Very little work occurred following this, as Druckmann stated in April 2016 that the film had entered development hell, and in February 2018 said "I don't want that movie to be made."
Following Hennig's departure from Naughty Dog in March 2014, it was announced that Druckmann and Straley were working on Uncharted 4: A Thief's End as creative director and game director, respectively. Initial reports claimed that Hennig was "forced out" of Naughty Dog by Druckmann and Straley, though Wells and Balestra later denied this. Druckmann co-wrote the story alongside Scherr; Druckmann considered Scherr the "funny one", letting him write the humor of Uncharted 4 due to Druckmann's self-professed inability to write jokes. He appreciated the collaboration of writing on Uncharted 4, having written The Last of Us almost entirely independently. The game was released on May 10, 2016, and praised for its story. It was awarded Best Narrative at the Game Awards 2016 and Outstanding Achievement in Videogame Writing at the 69th Writers Guild of America Awards. Dave Meikleham of GamesRadar+ found Uncharted 4 among the best-written video games, and it is often regarded as among the greatest games. Druckmann acted as head of narrative development for Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, worked as a playtester for What Remains of Edith Finch, and was featured as a guest judge on an episode of Face Off in August 2017.