Bruce Straley, the legendary director behind games like The Last of Us and Uncharted 2, has finally revealed a new game after almost a decade on the bench. With the reveal of Coven of the Chicken Foot at The Game Awards 2025, Straley has given a rare look into why he struck out from Naughty Dog in 2017, and where he’s going next.
The Game Awards 2025 saw Straley reveal Coven of the Chicken Foot, a game about an elderly witch and what the game’s official blurb describes a “peculiar creature.” A title that looks, in terms of aesthetics and gameplay, worlds away from Uncharted, the piece is being developed by Wildflower Interactive, a 16-person studio started by Straley in 2021.
Following the reveal of Straley’s new project, Polygon has released an interview with the veteran developer (conducted by Giovanni Colantonio). Within, Straley goes into the reasons why he left Naughty Dog and went forward with Wildflower Interactive, stating that he felt he was “working really, really hard at something that wasn’t mine.”
In elaborating on this point, Straley mentioned that he felt Naughty Dog (and, by extension, the AAA industry) had gotten into a rut, in part thanks to a cinematic action formula he helped create, saying “We were kind of in this paradigm of this style of game—that I was part of creating! But it felt like I’ve been in this position before. My brain isn’t good with that type of repetition. I need new problems to solve, I need new creative outlets.”
However, it seems as if Straley’s reasoning came down to the lack of control he had the big IPs he was working on, saying, ““It really comes down to: Do you want to continue working for someone else and put in all the effort to build an IP, to build characters, to build things that a franchise could be built out of?”
It’s no wonder, then, that Straley would go on to start his own initiative in the form of Wildflower Interactive. Going into his decision to leave the AAA space, Straley mentioned that ““Naughty Dog is literally the pinnacle of a style of game, and I really enjoyed making and playing that style of game. I wasn’t going to go to another AAA studio to make a first-person shooter or puzzle-platformer. It just didn’t feel like I was going to go somewhere else.”
The AAA industry is becoming harder for creatives
Straley’s complaints don’t come out of nowhere. Propelled on by Sony’s own love of remakes and remasters, Naughty Dog’s games have been spinning the same hits for a while now, and the rotation of do-overs and sequels is already enough of a fact of life in the industry.
While gamers are far quicker to welcome sequels than fans of, say, a film franchise, the AAA industry’s lack of new ideas is a rod for its own back. Shareholders and executives clutch too tight to what works, leading to either a repeating cycle of IPs or endless examples of a particular genre, such as what’s been happening with hero shooters.
Many fans are already looking forward to where Straley and his team are going next, with Coven of the Chicken Foot putting on a good show at The Game Awards.
