Neil Druckmann

Neil Druckmann (ניל דרוקמן; born December 5, 1978) is an Israeli-American writer, creative director, designer, and programmer.

Neil Druckmann was born into a Jewish family in Tel Aviv, Israel, on December 5, 1978, the son of Yehudit (Judith) and Jerry Ilan Druckmann.

His father is a former flight test engineer at Israel Aerospace Industries.

Druckmann's family lived in Ramat Aviv until 1981, when they moved to Beit Aryeh, a settlement in the West Bank, where Druckmann recalled violence was a frequent topic on the news and in conversations at home.

As an escape, his older brother Emanuel introduced him to comic books, video games, and movies at a young age.

These forms of entertainment, particularly video games by Sierra Entertainment and LucasArts, helped him learn English.

He became interested in storytelling and wrote his own comic books.

Druckmann moved to the United States with his family in 1989, attending middle school and high school in Miami, Florida.

He began to study a criminology major at Florida State University (FSU), aiming to get experience as an FBI agent to use when writing thriller novels.

His brother snuck him into E3 in the late 1990s, and he attended the conference again in 1998, 2000, and 2002, as well as SIGGRAPH in 2002 and 2003.

As an FSU student in 2001, he won a Conker's Bad Fur Day multiplayer competition organized by Nintendo and Playboy.

While studying, he worked as a clerk at My Favorite Muffin and a salesman at PacSun.

From July 2002, while living in Tallahassee, Druckmann spent a year as a graphics research assistant at FSU's Visualization Lab.

During this time, he and some friends began developing the game Pink-Bullet for Linux and Windows.

At one point, he wanted to be an animator, which required enlisting in art classes, but his parents forbade him from doing so.

After taking a programming class, Druckmann realized that it was his preference, and he began a Bachelor of Computer Science with a minor in math in December 2002, graduating cum laude the following year with a grade point average of 3.61.

Due to his academic results, he was a member of the Golden Key Honor Society.

He moved to Pittsburgh, where he attended Carnegie Mellon University, and began his master's degree in entertainment technology in August 2003 at the Entertainment Technology Center.

As part of the degree, he took a game design class by Jesse Schell, which taught him philosophies about positive impacts of games he would later use, and a virtual worlds course by Randy Pausch, which taught him to become more collaborative.

Druckmann worked as a visual effects artist for a friend's team around this time.

One of Druckmann's professors paid for him to attend the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in 2003, where he attended a presentation by Naughty Dog co-founder Jason Rubin.

After Druckmann "bugged" Rubin, the latter gave him his business card.

Some time later, Rubin contacted Druckmann and offered him an intern position, a first for Naughty Dog.

By the time Druckmann responded, the position had been taken.

When encouraged to apply for internships by CMU, Druckmann reached out to Rubin for advice, and was told about a new internship at the studio.

He was put in contact with game director Evan Wells, who offered him the internship after an interview at GDC.

During this time, he had also been offered an intern producer position at Electronic Arts on The Sims 2; he extended the offer in order to interview with Wells.

In 2004, he became a programmer on Jak 3 (2004) and Jak X: Combat Racing (2005), before becoming a designer for Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (2007).

In April 2004, he developed the game Dikki Painguin in: TKO for the Third Reich for the Nintendo Entertainment System as a student at Carnegie Mellon, in collaboration with fellow student Allan Blomquist.

In around May 2004, Druckmann joined Naughty Dog as a programming intern.

He was co-lead game designer for Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (2009), which he co-wrote with Amy Hennig and Josh Scherr; the narrative was praised and received several accolades.

He has also written comics, including the motion comic Uncharted: Eye of Indra (2009) and the graphic novels A Second Chance at Sarah (2010) and The Last of Us: American Dreams (2013).

Druckmann co-led the development of The Last of Us (2013) as writer and creative director, roles he continued for The Last of Us: Left Behind (2014) and Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (2016), co-writing the latter with Scherr.

All three games were directed by Bruce Straley, with whom Druckmann developed a close working relationship.

Druckmann and Craig Mazin are the creators, writers, and executive producers for the television adaptation of The Last of Us, for which Druckmann directed the second episode.

Druckmann was promoted to vice president of Naughty Dog in 2018 during the development of The Last of Us Part II (2020), for which he was creative director and co-writer with Halley Gross, and to co-president in 2020.

He earned praise for his writing and directing work on The Last of Us, Uncharted 4, and The Last of Us Part II, which are often regarded among the best written and greatest video games ever made.

Druckmann has received several awards, including three British Academy Games Awards, four D.I.C.E. Awards, two Game Awards, three Game Developers Choice Awards, and four Writers Guild of America Awards.

He has been co-president (alongside Evan Wells) of the video game developer Naughty Dog since 2020 and head of creative since 2023, and is best known for his work on the game franchises Uncharted and The Last of Us, having co-created the latter.

Druckmann's first video game work came as an intern at Naughty Dog.