The former Epic Games Senior Systems Designer Anders Howard has recently announced that he will be joining Naughty Dog, the creators of the highly-acclaimed Uncharted and The Last of Us franchises. Howard has joined the studio as its Principal Monetization Designer, being one of a couple of developers to be recently hired by Naughty Dog.

According to information available on Howard's LinkedIn page, he has worked with a few high-profile studios and helped to ship several games for nearly two decades, including his experience at Epic Games where he designed many of the core systems found in Fortnite: Save the World, and later, Fortnite's Battle Royale mode. Howard helped to build the foundation for progression strategies in Fortnite's battle pass, proceeding to ship a further 12 battle passes for the game, while also being involved with battle pass integrations in Rocket League and Fall Guys.

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A recent post from Anders Howard's Twitter account shows an image of him standing next to Naughty Dog's logo following a previous tweet at the end of October which announced his joining of the studio. An update to his LinkedIn page confirmed his role as Principal Monetization Designer for the studio, along with text that reads "New adventures await!"

While Howard hasn't provided any details as to what he'll be working on now, many fans of Naughty Dog's games have taken this as a sign that he'll be involved with the development of the studio's first standalone multiplayer title. This multiplayer game sprouted from what was originally a much smaller project called Factions, which was confirmed to be in the works some time ago. While little is known about what players can expect from the game upon its unspecified release at some point in the future, it's known to be set in the world of The Last of Us and was originally supposed to be a multiplayer component to The Last of Us Part 2 before the concept's full potential was realized as an opportunity to build a fully-fledged multiplayer game.

The possibility of an expert battle pass designer such as Howard working on the game has sparked plenty of speculation among fans, however. Howard's recent employment by Naughty Dog, along with the studio's recent search for a Live Ops Producer with preferably some experience in developing free-to-play titles, has given fans solid reason to suspect the future multiplayer game of being a free-to-play title. Though these are all still just unconfirmed rumors circulating throughout the community, many believe that Howard's expertise will be put to use in bringing battle pass and other monetization systems to the future title to support it as a potentially free-to-play game.

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Source: Comic Book