Bruce Straley

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. Straley's first video game work was as an artist at Western Technologies Inc, where he worked on the Menacer six-game cartridge and X-Men (1993). He formed a company, Pacific Softscape, working as a designer on Generations Lost (1994). After the company disbanded, Straley was hired at Crystal Dynamics, working as a designer on Gex: Enter the Gecko (1998) and as game director for Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko (1999); he left the company during development of the latter.

Straley 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 was later chosen to lead 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). Straley has received praise for his work. In particular, his work on The Last of Us was highly praised, and the game received several awards and nominations. 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.

Career

Other credits 2017 – Gorogoa (special thanks)

Film and television Year Title Notes 2012 Late Night with Jimmy Fallon Talk show; episode 653 2013 Grounded: Making The Last of Us Documentary 2015 Conversations with Creators Web series; episode 2

Awards and nominations

Telegraph Video Game Awards 2013 Best Director The Last of UsCo-nominated with Neil Druckmann

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Real-Time Project Uncharted 4: A Thief's EndCo-nominated with Eben Cook and Iki Ikram

Fun & Serious Game Festival Vanguard Award