We know that the highly anticipated multiplayer spin-off of The Last of Us: Part II: Naughty Dog boss Neil Druckmann more or less admitted on Twitter last week, begging fans for patience. While it’s unclear how close the Factions follow-up is to release, we do know that the developer will continue to build its ranks with some multiplayer-focused hires.
One of those roles it is currently advertising, as noted by GameSpot, is the job of an Economy Designer. The blurb should give you a good idea of what kind of tasks the candidate will be responsible for: “We are looking for a passionate multiplayer economy designer who can help us create avenues for self-expression for our players, to create a Robust lifespan for our games and give our players great rewards to aim for. ”
The job description goes on to say that recruitments are needed to ‘design and fine-tune game economics and progression’ and ‘collaborate extensively with [the live operations team] to optimize the economy and respond to the needs of players ”. It’s all kind of vanilla, but based on this we can draw some conclusions about what the future of The Last of Us’ multiplayer will look like.
In fact, it sounds like Naughty Dog wants to build a very “sticky” experience, with regular updates, as we see with Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War or Fortnite. Obviously, the franchise has its own signature gameplay style, but we wouldn’t be shocked if the developer here gets double the support after release.
Of course, the word ‘economy’ will lead readers directly to microtransactions, and while we expect this title to have all the trappings of a modern multiplayer game – a Battle Pass, for example, feels nailed – it’s worth noting that it seems a lot to refer to here to in-game economies; this position is advertised because Naughty Dog “wants to give our players great rewards to aim for”.
Hopefully we’ll get to see what cooked it up in the not too distant future.