Biography

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 in 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 (1992) and X-Men (1993). Following this, he formed a company, Pacific Softscape, where he worked as a designer on Generations Lost (1994). After the company disbanded, Straley was eventually hired at Crystal Dynamics, where he worked as a designer on Gex: Enter the Gecko (1998) and was initially game director for Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko (1999); he left the company partway through development of the latter.

Straley was employed at Naughty Dog in 1999. He worked as an artist on Crash Team Racing (1999) and the Jak and Daxter series (2001–2004). Following this, 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 announced his new studio, Wildflower Interactive, in July 2022.