We know that work is underway on the long-awaited multiplayer spin-off from Part II: Part II: Naughty Dog boss Neil Druckmann more or less admitted on Twitter last week, pleading for patience from fans. However, although it is not clear how close the launch of the Factions launch is, we know that the developer continues to materialize its ranks with a series of hires focused on multiplayer.
One such role that advertising is playing right now, as noted by GameSpot, is the position of an economic designer. Blurb should give you a good idea of what kind of tasks the candidate will be responsible for: “We are looking for a passionate multiplayer economy designer to help us create ways of self-expression for our players, ensure a robust longevity of games and offers to our players great rewards to strive for ”.
The job description goes on to say that recruitment will be necessary for the “design and regulation of the economy and the progress of the game” and “extensive collaboration with [the live operations team] to optimize the economy and meet the needs of the players ”. These are all pretty vanilla things, but we can make some inferences about what the future of multiplayer The Last of Us will look like based on this.
Indeed, it seems that Naughty Dog is trying to build a very “sticky” type of experience, with regular updates, as we see with Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War or Fortnite. Obviously, the franchise has its own distinctive style of play, but we would not be shocked to see the developer doubling the post-launch support here.
Of course, the word “economy” will lead readers directly to microtransactions, and although we anticipate that this title will have all the pitfalls of a modern multiplayer game – a Battle Pass, for example, feels like nails – it’s worth noting that it appears a lot to the savings in the game; this position is promoted because Naughty Dog wants to “give our players great rewards to fight”.
We hope to see what he has cooked in the not too distant future.