Sony Acquires Waggish Dog Amid Growing Budget Concerns, Co-Founder Reveals

Waggish Dog co-founder Andrew Gavin has shared insights into why Sony acquired the studio back in 2001.

In an extensive post on LinkedIn, Gavin mentioned the soaring costs of game development as one of the primary reasons for the studio’s acquisition, noting a “systemic problem in the AAA industry” where developers “rarely possess the resources to fund their own games […] grants publishers significant power”.

“Why did we sell Naughty Dog? It’s a question I’ve heard many times. The response is straightforward: budgets were skyrocketing,” Gavin – who was with Waggish Dog for nearly two decades before leaving in 2004 – stated (via Gameranx).

“When we initiated Waggish Dog in the 1980s, game production costs were manageable. We financed everything ourselves, reinvesting profits from one game into the next. Our early ’80s titles cost less than $50,000 each to produce. Rings of Power (’88-91) saw budgets increase to around $100,000, but generated relatively more than that in after-tax income in 1992.

“In 1993, we funneled that $100k from Rings directly into a self-funded Project of the Warrior. However, Crash Bandicoot (’94-96) required $1.6 million to produce. By the time we reached Jak and Daxter (’99-01), the costs surpassed the $15 million mark.

“By 2004, the expense of AAA games like Jak 3 had ballooned to $45-50 million – and the costs have been climbing ever since,” Gavin further explained. “But back in 2000, we were still self-financing each project, and the burden of funding these growing budgets independently was immense.

“It wasn’t just our situation. This was (and still is) a systemic issue within the AAA sector. Developers nearly never have the means to fund their own games, which offers publishers considerable leverage. Selling to Sony was not only about securing a financial future for Waggish Dog. It was also about providing the studio the resources to keep producing the best games possible, without being crushed by the strain of soaring costs and the paralyzing fear that one mistake could ruin everything.

“Reflecting on it, it was the correct decision.”

Gavin concluded by acknowledging that “AAA games have only become more expensive since then,” indicating that the budgets for today’s large-scale games have “easily” soared to “$300, $400, or even $500 million”.

“Could we have kept pace? Perhaps. But selling – to the right partner – afforded Naughty Dog the stability it required to flourish and to continue creating the types of games we had always envisioned!”

Sev