Bruce Straley

Game director of The Last of Us and Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

via Wikipedia: Bruce Straley · see source

Bruce Straley is an American game director, artist, designer, and studio director. He previously worked for the video game developer Naughty Dog, known for his work on the video games The Last of Us and Uncharted 4: A Thief's End.

Quick Facts

Occupation

Game director
artist
designer

Notable works

Uncharted, The Last of Us

Lore & Background

Bruce Straley grew up near Tampa, Florida. He attended the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale and received a degree in advertising design. He moved to Los Angeles and was hired at Western Technologies Inc, working on the Menacer six-game cartridge (1992) and X-Men (1993). He formed Pacific Softscape, working as a designer on Generations Lost (1994).

After the company disbanded, he worked at Crystal Dynamics as a designer on Gex: Enter the Gecko (1998) and as game director for Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko (1999); he left during development of the latter. He was hired at Naughty Dog in 1999, working as an artist on Crash Team Racing (1999) and the Jak and Daxter series (2001–2004). He became co-art director on Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (2007), and was promoted to game director of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (2009).

He later led development on The Last of Us (2013) as game director, a role he continued during the development of Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (2016). He departed Naughty Dog in September 2017, and started his own studio, Wildflower Interactive, in March 2021. They announced their debut game, Coven of the Chicken Foot, in 2025.