Naughty Dog Creative Director Joins Ready at Dawn

Naughty Dog Studios creative director Dan Arey has left the company to join with Ready at Dawn Studios, GI.biz interview confirmed today.

Arey played an integral part in helping to make the Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter series a breakout success of the PlayStation platforms; more recently, he became involved in much of the development on Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune for the PlayStation 3. “Naughty Dog and Sony were a wonderful ride, and it was an experience I’ll never forget. I was there for almost ten years, the last four as creative director”, he explained. “Really it was just a matter of being the right time for something new. You sometimes just feel it deep down.”

Arey will be joining many of his former ND co-workers at Ready at Dawn, the development house behind the PSP hit Daxter and the upcoming God of War: Chains of Olympus. “Ready at Dawn reminds me of where we were at Naughty Dog about eight years ago”, he commented. “RAD is an amazing collection of talent. They are hungry. They are intense. They have lively discussions about gameplay and they play games with passion.”

The team at Ready at Dawn is hard at work on a brand new IP that Arey describes as “amazing” and “much bigger than just a game.” He promises that the studio will deliver on some outstanding projects in the near future. “Naughty Dog was all about passion for the game; ‘The play’s the thing.’ A drive to make something that wasn’t just good, but great. It was more about great execution than anything else. Naughty Dog executed well, and Ready at Dawn has that same well oiled team machine.”

Arey will serve as creative director at Ready at Dawn.