Naughty Dog

The Santa Monica studio behind Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter, Uncharted and The Last of Us.

Matthew Gallant · CC BY-SA 4.0

Naughty Dog is an American video game developer based in Santa Monica, California, and a first-party studio of Sony. Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin founded it in 1984 under the name JAM Software, and Sony Computer Entertainment bought the studio in 2001. It created the Uncharted series, beginning with Uncharted: Drake's Fortune in 2007.

Quick Facts

Former name

JAM Software
Inc. (1984–1989)
Naughty Dog
Inc. (1989–2015)

Industry

Video games

Founded

1984 in McLean, Virginia, US

Founders

Andy Gavin, Jason Rubin

Headquarters

Santa Monica, California

Key people

Neil Druckmann (head of creative, president); Alison Mori (studio manager)

Employees

400+

Parent

Sony Computer Entertainment (2001–05), PlayStation Studios (2005–present)

Facts from the source article.

Background

Gavin and Rubin built the company through a run of increasingly successful games before Mark Cerny persuaded them to make a character-driven platformer, which became Crash Bandicoot; Naughty Dog made three Crash games over the following years. After Crash Team Racing the studio moved on to Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy for the PlayStation 2.

Gavin and Rubin left in 2004. Naughty Dog's first PlayStation 3 game was Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, followed by further Uncharted titles, and the studio then launched a new series, The Last of Us.