It's crunch time in the offices of Naughty Dog, the storied videogame developer in Santa Monica, California. On the morning of February 6, more than 300 artists, designers, and programmers are assembled in a maze of workstations, applying thousands of final micro-touches to a game they have been crafting for nearly six years called The Last of Us Part II. Neil Druckmann, the game's 41-year-old director, inspects the computer-lined trenches with the swept-back hair, frizzled beard, and beleaguered look of Jon Snow during a long battle.
Druckmann's adversaries? Time, his own perfectionism, and the reactions of a bunch of strangers off the street.
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