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Former artist tells how Naughty Dog functions without middle managers

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 1 min

Naughty Dog has been at the forefront of video game developing, making blockbuster games for Sony’s PlayStation platforms, from the Uncharted series to The Last of Us.

But it has an unusual management structure with minimal use of middle management, such as dedicated managers or producers. That’s pretty unusual for a studio with hundreds of employees. One of the company’s former art leaders gave a talk about this subject of how to properly manage game companies, and he shared it on YouTube.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.