The Last Of Us developer Naughty Dog making live service multiplayer game

A job ad from the creators of The Last Of Us is for a multiplayer economy designer, suggesting that the game could be free-to-play.

It’s been a couple of weeks since job ads have revealed secrets that games companies would probably rather have kept to themselves, and this one involves a new multiplayer game by The Last Of Us Part 2 developer Naughty Dog.

Naughty Dog has already announced they’re working on a multiplayer mode, or possibly standalone game, derived from The Last Of Us Part 2 but the job ad doesn’t mention the name of the project.

What it does describe though is a role for a ‘multiplayer economy designer’ who will have to ‘collaborate extensively with Live Ops team to optimise economy’, which makes it sound a lot like a games as a service title.

Following the success of Destiny, games as a service titles seemed poised to become the next big thing, with many publishers rushing to create games that are designed to run indefinitely, with a constant stream of new content and a reliance on microtransactions.

Free-to-play game such as Fortnite and Apex Legends have continued to be a success but paid-for titles, from Anthem to Marvel’s Avengers, have frequently struggled and have become increasingly uncommon.

However, it is entirely possible that Naughty Dog’s game is also free-to-play, which would make these features far more palatable, especially the reference to having to ‘tune game economy and player progression systems’ – which sounds a lot like a battle pass style system.

A free-to-play game, whether related to The Last Of Us or not, would be a change of pace for Naughty Dog, but then so would a solely multiplayer game.

It wouldn’t necessarily be a surprise though as the multiplayer for the original The Last Of Us was excellent and yet ended up being overshadowed by the story campaign, and so ignored by many.

How major a release the multiplayer game will be for the studio remains to be seen but they’ve previously indicated that their next big game will either be The Last Of Us Part 3 or a brand new IP.

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