Asmongold TV - The Most Hated Game Dev | Asmongold Reacts | Asmongold TV

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

The Most Hated Game Dev | Asmongold Reacts Asmongold show for all of his stream highlights, competitions, reactions & more. ------------------------------- -------- Keywords: gaming drama, gaming commentary, mmo gaming, gaming news, gaming podcast, game criticism, game reviews Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The most hated game dev. Do you guys think that Neil Druckman is actually the most hated game dev? I think that with Western audiences, he may in fact be the most hated guy, yeah. The years 2025 in the gaming world is at war. The years 2025 in the gaming world is at war. Yeah. On one side, the general public who doesn't get what the big deal is. If there truly are people that are dropping off of the show, they're cowards.

They didn't like strong women. They're afraid of a TV show? So let me get this. They're afraid of a TV show. I mean, they don't like a lesbian on the other side. Gamers. Well, the attacks on gamers are just beginning. The wokenest episode in television history.

At the center. Stan's Neil Druckman. And all I'll say is at the end of the day, you're way less important. And some of you are not important at all. It's laughable. We send it to each other as jokes some of the time. The beta male, the male feminist. A once universally respected visionary.

Now, the most divisive figure in gaming. This is hilarious. I saw this on Reddit. I'm going to kill your kid in front of you. What? How vile. Turning a game studio known for only making classics into one that only makes remasters and news headlines. This to me does feel actually disrespectful, and I mean that legitimately.

And I think that it all started with an idea he had in college. It's 2004, and Neil needs to pitch a zombie game to the father of zombie movies, George Romero. We had a school project where we had to pitch game ideas to George Romero. So the idea was for this kind of the story. His idea is about a cop protecting a young girl. In the game, the player switches between the two characters to force him to force him. I pitched it to George, and he hated it. So I just sat on it.

After getting a job as a programmer at the game studio Noddy Dog, he continues to work on these ideas in the background. until Noddy Dog promotes Neil, along with Uncharted 2 director Bruce Strayley, to direct a new project. Our task was to reboot Jack and Dexter. We started to realize that... Wait, that never happened, though, right? I don't remember that ever happening. That it was not going to do justice to the franchise that the fans had fallen in love with.

It would be shifting it so far in a new direction. I'm like, well, I have this thing I've been working on. What if we try to do this? Eventually, this turns into a game based on his zombie. idea. The old cop becomes a smuggler named Joel, who's tasked with escorting a girl that's immune to the virus named Ellie across the country to people that are working on a cure. Some of Neil's other pitches include Joel being a hardened criminal seeking redemption, a virus that only infects woman.

And you found the one... They already have that. It's called feminism. Girl that it didn't infect, and that was Ellie. And the reason it failed is because it was a misogynistic idea. Her revenge plot were Joel's old partner Tess, hunts him across the country. In a climactic scene where Ellie comes in and saves Joel from being bickered by test. The game's director, Bruce Strayley, rejects the revenge elements. Quote, revenge just wasn't a strong enough motivation for someone to travel all the way across

an apocalyptic country for an entire year. At the time, Neil agrees, I'm pretty dark. I wanted to kill Elena and uncharted too. Bruce is the one that would balance me and push for more levity. The partnership works. It's a delicate tug of war, but the end result is lightning in a People are constantly critiquing each other, and that's the culture we try to cultivate here at 90-dollar. Because it helps make the game better, even if sometimes it can be frustrating and hurt your ego, but at the end of the day, it's all about the game. The game launches in June 2013. And both critics in play. I feel like everybody, like this game, in my opinion, has done irreparable damage to gaming.

Because ever since The Last of Us came out, everybody has wanted to make video games into movies. Like, I really don't like that. I think it's shifted the way that, because I see there's so many games that are like this now. And yeah, it's the first movie game? Yeah. And like a Kojima, yeah, no. But like, I mean, I'm not saying all of them are bad. Like some of them are good. I mean, I heard The Last of Us part one was good. But I think that a lot of people have tried to copy this because I think that people would always try to emulate Hollywood because they want to be Hollywood, which I think it's a bad idea. Here's our Florida.

Making this the fourth game ever to earn my highest rating. Damn. Damn. It's like a movie. Actually, my involvement is nothing. But the story? That's the problem. Is universally praised as a step forward for video games.

Serra is dead. Don't think the zombie wing. By the end of the game, players are empathizing so hard, to the point of it almost feeling traumatic. Could you put your life on the line for me? Could you be the last of us? And the ambiguous ending sparks countless debates online. And so we don't want to come on and say it's, oh, this is what we intend.

Oh, this is definitely the answer because it is open. Suddenly, Neil gets universally praised as a storytelling genius. Yep. It sticks in your mind even deeper on one level than a great work of literature or a cinematic masterpiece to some extent. But their success comes with consequences. In 2014, right in the middle of production on Uncharted 4, Amy Henig, one of the key creative forces behind Uncharted,

leaves Noddy Dog under controversial circumstances. It was very upsetting. Amy had been replaced. I don't know whether this is public knowledge or not, but that was not her choice. It was the company's choice. At the same time, Neil gets promoted to fill Amy's spot and reworks everything.

Is it tough for you to go into the set and work with Neil Druckman? You just have to be professional. and try and leave your opinions and resentments outside, yeah. Isn't it crazy how, like, people can work with other people that they disagree with without completely crashing out? Like, and it's like most older people know that, but it's been lost on younger people? Yeah.

The development crunch is so brutal. Wow. That nearly 70% of designers quit after shipping due to creative burnout. Oh, my God. Among them, Bruce Strayley, Neil's creative partner. Damn. filter for his darker impulses is gone. As Neil rises in the ranks, he grows more comfortable with confrontation. After getting some backlash for including LGBT content in The Last of Us DLC, he takes to

Twitter. For each one of these bigoted and sad posts, I get thousands of positive ones from amazing fans. Some might say arguing on the internet is unprofessional, and it could leave you vulnerable to having your personal information stolen. I think that in general, if you do, if you try to push out a narrative like this and you try and do something like that, that's fine. But I think that a lot of people get frustrated by it whenever it's not really done in the main story, and then you add it in afterwards in order to get like virtue signal points. Kind of like what happened with Dumbledore. That's why you should be using Surfshark, the sponsor of this video.

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Like, I don't know how they all make money. Like Surfshark Alert, which notifies you immediately if your email, passwords, or credit card information ever appear in a data breach. So you can sleep peaceful. Visit surfshark.com slash sirW or enter promo code SirW for four months free. Surfshark also offers a 30-day money back to the agency, so there's no risk in trying it out today. By doing so, you're also helping me make more videos. While arguing with fans might take a toll on Neil, it doesn't affect his standing at Naughty Dogg. In fact, in 2017, he's promoted to vice president of the company.

Now he has full creative control and a fresh team of developers. It's time to get honest. The writer's responsibility. You have no social responsibilities in your writing. The only thing you have a responsibility is to tell the truth. Just in time to start working on their next big project. The Last of Us. Part two.

Part two. The whole world applauds. However, some fans remain skeptical. Did they even need to make a second game? Wasn't the ambiguous ending part of the point? And so we don't want to come on and say it's, oh, this is what we intend. Oh, this is definitely the answer because it is open. I know there's a lot of people that feel this trepidation about revisiting what that ending mean.

No one loves these characters more than we do, and we would not do this if we didn't feel like we had the right idea. Right off the bat, it's clear this is a Neil game. All of Neil's rejected ideas for the first game are back. The revenge plot, the switching between characters mechanic, and his idea to kill a main character from Uncharted 2. The Extreme Crunch is also... So let me get this straight. So Baldi was keeping him in check. Baldi gets removed.

This guy makes his own game the way he wants it to be, and everybody hates it. Back. Where are we on getting physics on these stands? That explains a lot. So for next time? For next time? Yes, yes. They released a story trailer and gameplay demo,

and the hype train is now at full speed. Wow. The visuals are stunning. Every square inch of the world is drenched in detail. I see this. It reminds me of every single Unreal 5 game. Dude, they did the lips so well. Yeah, that actually looks really good.

Wow. So they're making out with these other ones. I'm toggling in there. That's actually, like seriously, that's really, really good. Yeah. And oh God. Nevertheless, even with just breadcrumbs, the online debates are already heating up. There started to be these rumors about the game, false narratives, that the game has homophobic Christians, and that's who you fight.

And then there's a series of, like, YouTube. and websites to just run with this stuff. Neil knows the creative choices aren't going to please everybody. But as long as no one inside spoils anything, he thinks the backlash will be manageable. And I just, I was able to dismiss it, and then the leaks happen. And then all of a sudden it's like a flood.

With only a couple months until the game's release, someone leaks the biggest spoiler in the game. Joel's death scene in full. Plus the fact that you play as his killer for around half of the game. The YouTube video gets taken down at a round of thousand, But that's enough. Neil Brace is for impact. Just want to say on behalf of everyone at Nottie Dog, a lot of you have sent us very sweet,

encouraging messages along that have been really helpful. We make this thing. And that was the lowest point in my life. If the leaks are true, this game can kiss my... The destruction of several characters that people are very attached to. And like those voices jumped. Everybody is trying to be George R. Martin. People are trying to be that guy that kills the really important character.

And it's like, you know, like to write the story where like Gandalf dies in like, you know, the fellowship of the ring or something. Like they're trying to do this, you know, like and you know, you saw this happen. And it's not that nobody can do it. I mean, they did it with Expedition 33. No spoilers included. But they did it. And it's not that you can't do it, but there's a lot of people that try and do it, and they fucking fail.

On Joel dying in the fact that you played Joel's killer. And in the fact that they said that, like, Joel's killer is transgender. If you think that game could be spoiled by a couple screenshots, really? No matter what you've seen or heard. After you hear them, you're not going to want to pick up this game. Damn. Nothing compares to playing this thing. the beginning to end.

Joke throughout production would say is like the downfall of naughty dog. This is it. This is the downfall of naughty dog. The game releases in June 2020 and within hours of the game's release hundreds of negative reviews start flooding the game's page.

This is the kind of shit that really is confusing. Hours of the games release. You look at this right here. This right here is the problem and this is like this happened a few years ago, right? Like at this point. So like this is the reason why games journalism died. This right here.

At the end of the day, what point does a review serve? What purpose does a review serve other than to inform the customer? And it is very obvious that for whatever reason, whether you agree with it or not, these professional reviews certainly did not represent the fucking customer. Negative reviews start flooding the game's page. Nottie Dogg just went full of the last Jedi on this one. Considering the game is supposed to be 20 to 30 hours long. the number of negative reviews raises some eyebrows.

In response, some people even publish research articles dedicated to proving it's a coordinated attack. Sony, yeah, it was a coordinated attack, but it probably also was a coordinated benefit because a lot of, like, a lot of journalists and people, they put a very high value on things like diversity and different types of like social dynamics that are being represented in video games or in media. But that type of value isn't really represented. by the public. So how is it fair that they overvaluate, but it's unfair whenever the players

and the actual consumers undervalue it or anti-value it? That's the issue. And that that's what's so confusing about this, is that it's very obvious that these people make it like, you know, like the Dragon Age, the Veil Guard getting a nine out of ten. There's no way it was a nine out of ten game. Like, nobody thinks that. Nobody believed that. And IGN gave it that rating. Same with like Blackmouth Woo Kong having an 8 out of 10 because of some bullshit thing that like wasn't even true was based off a bad translation. And so the big issue is that I think yeah, you're right that you have a lot of negative reviews that happen. But if somebody gives a negative review, a negative review for a reason why you're not going to consume a product, it doesn't matter as much

as a review in my opinion of like somebody who actually played it and knew for sure. But it does matter. Like you absolutely should be able to discuss this is why I chose. not to play this game. It's allegedly taking down hundreds of reviews. Attacking gamers again, which, who surprised, it's kind of funny that they'll delete the negative ones, right? But they won't delete the positive one. This guy's really salty that the game didn't go the way he wanted it.

Metacritic also implements a 72-hour waiting period for future reviews. Attacks are coming at Neil from all sides. But rather than letting it pass over, Neil goes full offense. And all I'll say is at the end of the day, to all our critics, we listen to that stuff, we digest a lot of it, but you're way less important. And some of you are not important at all when you're kind of shout and threaten and doing all that stuff. The problem is that the game sucked.

Okay? If Kojima said this, everybody would be spamming based. The problem is not that you're acting this way. The problem is that you're acting this way after your game flopped. That's the issue. Laffable. We send it to each other as jokes some of the time. Look, I get it.

You love these fictional characters. But they're not real. You do know that, right? Guys, don't be scared of therapy. Think of it like working out for your brain. But soon, bad reviews aren't the only thing on Neil's plate. Some of the more observant fans notice lies in the marketing, mainly that Joel is added in post to make it look like he's a bigger part of the game. They also make him look different. I don't know why they would do that. Just have scenes in the trailer with Joel in them. That's not hard to do. They went out of their way to cut clips to make it look like Joel is involved in the scene. Fans call it false. advertising. So they're trying to bait people in there by knowing this is the character they like the most, and then they're going to kill the character that they like the most, and then somehow this is going to be what the fans want. But Neil says he just didn't want to spoil the surprise. Metal Gear Solid 2 is one of my favorite games.

And I love, I know some people hated it. By the way, that's a completely justified reason. I don't mind that at all for him to say that. That's totally okay. I loved when I played Metal Gear Solid 2 and I saw those trailers. You were deceived, right? Because they moved boss battles around. You always saw Snake.

They never showed you, right? And I remember like, I'm playing a whole new character. This is fucking awesome. However, fans bring up an IGN article from 2018. A great example with this too is that it's Expedition 33. Like, it's kind of a new game so I'm not going to spoil it. But it's very obvious that, you know, I mean, I had no idea that was going to happen. I had no idea at all.

And it's because of the way that it was advertised. And that was a good thing. It's Neil is saying Ellie will be the only playable character. To make the situation worse. As the Game Awards approach, when The Last of Us Part 2 is nominated for Game of the Year, Neil tweets, The Last of Us fans, activate.

For every vote you cast for The Last of Us Part 2, a hater loses their caps lock. Uh-oh. This wasn't a good tweet. First of all, uh, it's crazy how this guy, you know,

Hill versus Babyface as went on that pronouns rant about Starfield and it's like again it's like one of those things where like the it just gets it's like a an appreciating asset

like that rant becomes more relevant and more people resonate with it every single year. It's a very passive aggressive tweets particularly with his emoji at the end. He apologizes saying it was all a misunderstanding. Stop defending Neil Cookman. Well no I was just saying that the ins, like, I don't know, like, I'm just talking about this, just being fair, right?

Like, I'm saying like, oh yeah, that would make sense to me if you want to give people the impression, this is what's going to happen. Like, yeah, I don't think that, I don't think it's bad to say that. I want to come across to someone who dislikes criticism. My tweet was meant as a joke, R.E. trolls. Yeah. Essentially, we're living in his head rent-free. But none of his former fans buy it. Multiple YouTubers report receiving strikes from Neil.

Over videos critical of the game or the leaks. Not only did Naughty Dog strike down my YouTube channel along with so many others. They also are responsible for my Twitter account being taken down. Come September 2020. Where's the fucking receipts for something like that, you know? 2. Neal's ongoing battle with fans hasn't died down. And Naughty Dog hasn't announced any new games.

Fans are getting impatient. But it gets worse. In 2022, they announced a $70 remake of The Last of Us Part 1. $70 for a remake? of a $20 game that's already been remastered. Well at least it's... They gotta have that money. Yep, they need that money. It's coming to PC. Hopefully the port is okay. Oh boy. Players booted up. Wow. And it's, uh, well...

Wasn't that the prime minister of Canada? After over an hour of waiting for it to build shaders, frame rate issues on the most high-end computers, textures not loading properly, and cutscenes where all the characters are wet. How does this one even work? If you plan on buying the Last of Us One remake, you're an idiot. You don't deserve to call yourself a gamer or ever play video games again. In fact, you don't even deserve to peek at a video game again.

And quite frankly, I hope your hands cramp up. After two years, who is this guy? Sales disappoint. Critics call it unnecessary. And the goodwill and Neil's haters all but evaporates. Yeah, I remember when this came out. Drunkman became an ecomaniac after the last of us and lost his sense of humility. Fast forward a year and things aren't looking much better.

In terms of games, just remastered. Yeah, I think that a lot of people don't like Neil Druckman because he comes off as the most pretentious theater kid, like, you know, trying to put on and project the image of being this, like, tormented, you know, like writer or, like, you know, like, creative mind. It's like this guy's Vincent Van Gogh, but the only thing that he did was stab himself in the chest. You know?

Or cut off his ear. But Neil feels good. He's been promoted to Head of Noddy Dog, and HBO launches the Last of Us TV series. Before it's released, Neil announces major changes to the story, with no input from Bruce Australia as far as anyone knows. That's convenient. The Bill sequence works very well in the game because you're fighting the infected with Bill. I think if we had adapted that exactly as for the show,

maybe a thrilling episode, but dramatically would have been a lot less interesting than where we've ended up, which we changed it quite a bit. His ex-fans are primed to hate it. But in the end, it's actually pretty good. In fact, HBO says it's one of their most popular shows that year. Neil becomes somewhat of a mainstream celebrity. New fans start pouring in. Game sales spike.

And he finally feels like he has some people on his side until season two. It's crazy because that's exactly what happened with the game. It's almost like if you tell a story, like this is a big fantasy that a lot of people that are in media believe, is that the average modern audience cares less about these social issues and different types. dynamics than gamers do. But the reality is that in fact it's the opposite. Gamers and, you know, like online people are much more accepting and open-minded of things like non-traditional gender rules, non-heteronormative relationships.

Like all of the things that, you know, people complain about woke stuff with, there's a lot of like average Walmart Americans. And they just see that on the TV. They said, oh, this is weird. What's the? Oh, shit. They, oh, this is. Oh, I didn't.

watch this game. Okay, what's this? And they're done. They don't even think about it. Yeah, if you push it, right? Like, they're not even like, it's not like they're getting mad. They're not writing like a whole thing about it. They're just like, oh, this is weird. I'm not going to watch this. And that's what an average person, I think, does a lot. And I think that what these people believe is that average people, because they think that they're average, but they're not average. This is like a very unique viewpoint that they have. Average people are totally okay with this stuff, but they are absolutely not. Why people didn't like the second game in season? It's nothing to do with Woke? It did in the game. People didn't like that Abby character because she had a

non-female body and they thought that it was a weird type of like representation. And I think that that definitely was a big reason why. Like I didn't even play the game and I know that. I mean, I'm just saying like that that is the reason. Like I go goes beyond that. No, no, no. No, but what I'm saying is that you're right. You're right. It's maybe it's not woke stuff. It's the story is what you guys are saying.

You're right about that. But I'm saying also whenever you're talking about putting these ideas out to the public, the public dislikes them more than you'd imagine. It turns out fans of the show who haven't played the games have no idea what's in store. Yeah. Kill him with a golf club? I don't know what to do right now. I don't think it was going to happen this soon.

And after Joel's big moment, public opinion shifts. IGN gives the episode their lowest rating in history. The results is a competent, often thrilling hour of television, but one that ultimately underserved the larger story and the characters it forever changes. Viewership starts to fall off and the season finale sees a 55% drop from the first season. You have to expect that some people would just switch off after that. And people have switched off. in their droves, but not only that.

In December 2024, fans finally get a brief glimpse of something. It just keeps getting worse. New. This time, Neil has an executive producer role, but that doesn't make it void of controversy. Bro, I saw that intergalactic, the Heretic Prophet, literally had more dislikes to Concord. Actress for naughty. Dogg's upcoming game Intergalactic Heretic Prophet mocked gamers by sharing pro-DeiI fan art. These are games that definitely are anti-.

I love how this has. happens and like what's really funny is that the current reality is that this game is under water and they have to they they apparently are telling people at the studio not to not to go on the internet and not to talk about it or think about it and then this game they totally change the way that Siri looked from the original video or at least Siri looks it's very hard to say where they changed it or not but Siri looks totally different than the way she did from the original video and she is 100% hotter. So, like, this is literally an L and an L.

It'll get shadow dropped. But Neil says not to worry that this next game is going to deal with a much less controversial subject matter. Oh, we made a game with the last of us two, we made certain creative decisions. I got us a lot of hate. So the joke is like, you know what, let's do something that people won't care as much about. Let's make a game about faith and religion. Whether it's any good or not we've yet to see. But it's clear Neil's not taking his foot off the break any time.

soon. I can respect a guy that's got his ideas, you know, and he has his creative vision and he wants to do it. But at the same time, I don't really think this is going to go anywhere. And I feel like, honestly, with a lot of studios, there's a video, give it a like. I've never actually watched one of this guy's videos, Sir W. And yeah, his 89,000 subscribers. This is a good video. And it's funny for me to see this, but I do think that Neil Druckman has become like the fucking uh like he has become the spirit animal of every pretentious annoying woke theater kid pretend tormented artist writer that just makes shitty stories that people don't like i feel like

this is the guy right the anti-cojima yeah because everybody wants to be kojima and like this is like our you know how like you know how like sometimes they have like a like a like a a fucking store brand of something, like the great value. This is like our great value, Kojima. And it's sad. And I think also there's a lot of people that write great stories, and they just don't do like all the self-aggrandizement. You know, like Shadowbringer's story was written by a woman apparently in Final Fantasy. People love that. You've got the Expedition 33. People love that. So like the entire premise of this is bullshit. I'll be right back. Give me on it.