The team at Naughty Dog had to put in massive overtime to complete the game.
Every game developer usually goes through a period where a lot more work needs to be done to finish a game by a deadline than can fit in a 40-hour work week. Sometimes, that week balloons to 80 hours or more just to meet the ambitious milestones set by publishers and game producers. And when that game has as high a profile as Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 3, not meeting deadlines and delaying the game past the holiday season was just not an option. According to senior members of the development team, the extended period of overtime or “crunch” as it’s called in the business was the most punishing Naughty Dog had ever experienced.
“It was pretty brutal this time around,” said Josh Scheer, the guy behind the cinematics in Uncharted 3. “I mean, there’s always crunch. There’re always people putting in extra hours, but this time around, just because of the scope and the ambition of the game – even after we had gone back and shortened some things, trimmed some other things – there was just still a lot to do, in the amount of time we had to do it.”
The international success the Uncharted series enjoys, as well as the strong narrative, made completing the game that much more difficult. That’s because Uncharted 3 features a story told in “more languages than we have ever done before, both spoken and text translation,” said game director Justin Richmond.
Uncharted 3 is available in stores today in North America on the PS3.
Source: Develop
