- Former Microsoft executive Laura Fryer says that Naughty Dog’s decision to cancel The last of us online was “the right call”
- She explains that the studio “made the harder choice” by looking ahead and realizing it wouldn’t be able to sustain a live service game
- Fryer also questioned why Naughty Dog greenlit it in the first place, saying, “The ambition was there, but the realistic planning ahead of time wasn’t”
Former Microsoft Game Studios executive producer Laura Fryer believes that the decision to cancel The last of us Online was the right decision on Naughty Dog’s part, and greenlighting the project was the “real mistake”.
Earlier this month The last of us Online game director Vinit Agarwal revealed that the multiplayer spin-off was “almost 80% complete” and “was very, very close to being done” before Naughty Dog pulled the plug in 2023.
At the time of the game’s cancellation, the studio was known for its single-player titles such as Uncharted and The last of us said it canceled the project because it did not want to “become an exclusively live-service game studio”.
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Agarwal, who shared that he worked on the game for seven years, learned of its cancellation 24 hours before the public and that Naughty Dog decided to focus on its main single-player narrative game, Intergalactic: The Heretical Prophetinstead of diverting resources to an online title.
According to Laura Fryer, despite how devastating the cancellation was for the team and “soul-crushing”, as Agarwal described it, this was “the right call”.
“A lot of people are saying they should have just finished the game and shipped it because it was so close, and I understand how frustrating that must be for the players who were looking forward to the game,” Fryer said in a new YouTube video.
“But I think it’s missing the bigger picture, because the truth is, this is a classic example of the sunk cost fallacy, and I’ve seen it play out many times before, where you have a studio that’s already spent years and millions and they feel like they have to ship the game anyway, that they have no choice, even when they know the long-term live service support is going to be brutal.”
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Fryter went on to say that Naughty Dog did not do this and “made the harder choice” by looking ahead and realizing that it would not be able to sustain a multiplayer game and risk turning the single-player studio into a live service operation that can only support one game for years to come.
“In my opinion, it was the right call,” she said. “Although it hurt the team that worked so hard on it, they chose to go back to what their studio’s bread and butter was, single-player narrative games.”
The former Xbox executive also questioned why Naughty Dog decided to start the project in the first place, calling the live service model “an endless treadmill” for studios working on these types of games.
“Any studio manager could have run the numbers on which team [of] Naughty Dog’s size could realistically support,” continued Fryer. “They could have seen pretty clearly that a team the size of Naughty Dog could never support a live service game and all of their amazing cinematic single player games. It was not possible. But instead of doing that analysis, they went ahead and let the game go forward. They let it run for 7 years.”
Follow The Last of Us Online’s cancellationrevealed former PlayStation director Shuhei Yoshida that feedback from Fate developer Bungie played a role in the decision, and Naughty Dog realized they couldn’t support it alongside their single-player projects.
Noting that this was the “core issue” from the start, Fryer said: “The ambition was there, but the realistic planning up front was not.”
“Naughty Dog ultimately protected what they do best, good cinematic single player games. It’s good leadership even when it hurts,” she added. “And sometimes the bravest thing a studio can do is admit something isn’t going to work before it drags the whole company down.”
She went on to explain that while fans may be disappointed, and she understands the pain of the development team, “pulling the plug wasn’t the right mistake.”
“The real mistake was in greenlighting this experiment in the first place without doing the homework beforehand. That’s my view,” Fryer said.
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