Game studio models: Naughty Dog vs Bethesda
- Former Naughty Dog and Bethesda artist Heather Cerlan used a Kiwi Talkz interview to map how the two studios organize teams, tools, and output. - Cerlan said Naughty Dog had no producers on her teams and gave artists broad ownership, while Bethesda relied more on producers and pipeline structure. - The contrast tracks with each studio’s games: authored action adventures at Naughty Dog, sprawling systemic role-playing games at Bethesda. (rss.com)
Heather Cerlan, a former artist at Naughty Dog and Bethesda, said the studios are built around different management models, tools, and kinds of games. (rss.com) (youtube.com) In Kiwi Talkz episode 207, published April 25, 2026, Cerlan said Naughty Dog “didnt have producers” on her team, while Bethesda used a more producer-led structure. (rss.com) (youtube.com) Her account was not a scorecard. Cerlan worked at both studios before co-founding NEARstudios, where she is now making Hawthorn with veterans from Bethesda, BioWare, and Naughty Dog. (cerlan3d.com) (gamedeveloper.com) The practical difference starts with what each studio ships. Naughty Dog is known for tightly directed games like Uncharted and The Last of Us; Bethesda Game Studios is known for large open-world role-playing games like Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Starfield. (naughtydog.com) (bethesdagamestudios.com) Cerlan described Naughty Dog as a place where artists had more direct ownership over scenes and spaces. She described Bethesda as more scheduled and systematized, with producers helping coordinate work across a much larger simulation. (youtube.com) (rss.com) That lines up with the technology each studio has invested in. Cerlan said Bethesda’s Creation Engine was built to stream and manage huge worlds, while Naughty Dog’s internal stack supported cinematic presentation and hand-authored polish. (youtube.com) (rss.com) Creation Engine is the software foundation under Bethesda’s role-playing games, the part that handles world data, quests, objects, and streaming as players move across a map. Bethesda used Creation Engine 2 for Starfield. (bethesda.net) (starfield.com) Naughty Dog does not sell a branded public engine, but its games have long been built on internal technology tuned for animation, scripted encounters, and visual continuity. That kind of toolchain favors control over every beat rather than maximum world breadth. (naughtydog.com) (youtube.com) Cerlan also said there was internal pressure at Bethesda to move to Unreal Engine, a reminder that engine choice is also a staffing and production question. Switching engines can mean retraining teams, rebuilding tools, and changing how content gets made. (rss.com) (unrealengine.com) Her current project shows what she appears to have taken from both places. Hawthorn is pitched as a co-op sandbox role-playing game with village-sim elements, combining Bethesda-style systemic play with a more authored social space. (playhawthorn.com) (gamedeveloper.com) Cerlan’s comparison lands at a moment when players often ask why one studio cannot simply make games like another. Her answer was structural: management style, production tools, and engine design narrow the kinds of games a studio can make well. (youtube.com) (rss.com)
