Elephants were only supposed to be background characters in Uncharted: The Lost Legacy.
But that changed when Naughty Dog’s lead animator started messing about. She placed Chloe on the back of one as a joke.
The idea got a mixed reaction across the team.
Enough people were interested for the studio to end up developing a whole playable elephant-riding sequence - even bringing in an animal welfare consultant to ground it in the realism Naughty Dog’s known for.
When I joined Rise at Seven, I was asked to add 10 wishes to my bucket list. Rise grants one of these wishes to somebody every year.
One of mine was to do an internship at Naughty Dog because of stuff like this.
The elephant story is told in full by Marianne Hayden in her talk from the 2019 Game Developers Conference.
I love it because - for all the processes, tools, frameworks, platforms, models and data at our fingertips - some of the most memorable work I’ve ever encountered came from a funny place…
An SEO pitch themed on basketball because of a Netflix documentary the team were watching the week before.
An organic visibility defence system inspired by Jürgen Klopp’s style of football.
An organic strategy that only emerged because of what a single piece of synthwave imagery did to the ideation room.
A data-led campaign that built a shared economy across multiple video games, and real life, using a carrot as the anchor to the whole study.
A content brochure based on Sim City - born out of our designer mocking up a Game of Thrones battle analogy just because we were obsessed at the time.
I like working in places that make room for a bit of messing about, or a weird idea. Yeah, you might need to hire a fucking animal welfare specialist to make it work…but that’s tomorrow’s problem.