Naughty Dog Surprised By Gender Role Backlash for The Last of Us

SANTA MONICA, Calif. August 6 - Naughty Dog is surprised about the backlash the studio received in regards to the gender roles existing in The Last of Us, creative leads Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley told VentureBeat in an interview published today.

"We were surprised by some of the criticism of our use or execution of the female roles inside of the game, and some of the backlash that we got from it," Straley said. "I think we did an extraordinary job of creating strong characters--men, women, black, white, gay, straight. We're just trying to create completely fleshed-out characters. Yet somehow we were used as a soapbox or something for people to stand on and say that there are still problems with the industry."

Despite their perplexity, the concept of sexism in the game industry should be discussed, not shied away from.

"It's good to have the conversation. We agree about all of those things. Every single one of those inequalities in the industry," Straley said. "We need to have that discussion and we need to be more mature about our approach to the medium. It was just odd, the way it felt like our game was being used in that way. I mean, think of all the games you could use instead of The Last of Us."

Naughty Dog was asked to push The Last of Us' female protagonist, Ellie, to the back of the game's box in order to ensure higher sales figures, the studio refused and still 3.4m copies of the game were sold within three-weeks of its debut.

SOURCE: VentureBeat