Last week, Sony published some seemingly innocuous fluff, broadly laying out its long-term “creative entertainment vision” along with some interviews with key employees. Neil Druckmann, head of Sony’s Naughty Dog studio, was one of them – and his interview made waves in the gaming world. According to the interview, Druckmann said that AI could “create nuanced dialogue and characters” and also said that a new Naughty Dog game was in development (but not officially announced) that could “redefine the fundamental notions of gaming.” Strong and potentially controversial statements from a studio head beloved by The Last of Us and Uncharted franchises.
The problem is that Druckmann has been wildly misquoted by his employers. A few days after Sony published the interview, Druckmann reached out to X and said, “it’s not what I said.” He then went full Elli-in-revenge mode on Sony by posting a portion of the original interview transcript. (To be fair, he was actually pretty polite—even the strong can only bite the hand that feeds so much.) Regardless, things don’t add up here.
In my recent interview with SONY, some of my words, context and intentions were unfortunately lost while editing my rambling answers. Here’s the full long, rambling answer to the last question about our upcoming game… pic.twitter.com/tVuxX3LYJF
— Neil Druckmann (@Neil_Druckmann) May 25, 2024
Game reporter Stephen Totilo shared his own comparison of what Druckmann said and what Sony published, with Sony’s response bolding the words Druckmann never said — and those words were the majority of the quote. Sony basically mouthed the words and published them, causing a classic gamer frenzy.
Honestly, if I were Druckmann, I’d be pretty pissed off too. Look at this butchery!
In case you’re wondering (about what he said; and how I spend a Friday night when my wife and kids are away), here’s a comparison of the original answer and the edited answer.
Lots of changes
Unsurprisingly, it was cut: “It’s not because games have to be movies or TV shows” pic.twitter.com/FkxNkqQPY2
— Stephen Totilo (@stephentotilo) May 25, 2024
Now, five days later, Sony has completely removed the interview from its website. However, they didn’t just delete the page – they took it down, apologizing to Neil and the Naughty Dog team “for any negative impact this interview may have caused”.
My favorite bit is easily this:
In re-reviewing our recent interview with Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann, we discovered several significant errors and inaccuracies that did not represent his perspective and values (including topics such as animation, writing, technology, AI, and future projects).Sony
So everything he said about animation, writing, technology, AI, and future projects had mistakes. Hey, at least they are nailed his name and title.
For those interested, you can still read the “interview”. at archive.org.
