Developed by Naughty Dog, the studio best known for the Uncharted series, The Last of Us is a post-apocalyptic story with two characters at its core. Joel is a survivor who loses his young daughter at the very beginning of the game. Twenty years later he’s become a hardened man and a smuggler, and eventually he meets Ellie, a 14-year-old girl and the only known person immune to the virus that has destroyed much of civilization. The two form a bond over time, with Joel taking on a paternal role and Ellie filling in the hole left by his daughter’s death. Ellie slowly develops into a more independent person over the course of the game, and their roles are occasionally reversed, as the player takes control of Ellie. While the core idea is similar, The Last of Us is a long way from that original pitch Druckmann dreamed up in university. And it took a whole lot of failure to get to that point.

Not long after taking a job at Naughty Dog, where he started out as a programmer, Druckmann decided he wanted to revisit the concept. "What's another way that I can explore these characters?" he thought to himself. The answer was a comic book called The Turning. This time, the roles had changed somewhat, as the cop became a criminal who had lost his daughter. When he meets a young girl he becomes her protector. "It was mostly about him trying to get this girl to safety," explains Druckmann. However, at the end it would be the girl who would save his life after he's captured by some former criminal partners.

His plan was to both write and draw the comic in his spare time. He eventually completed the script for a six-issue story arc, and pitched it to an indie comic book publisher. But just like George Romero, the publisher wasn't that into the idea. "I like it, but I don't love it," Druckmann was told.

"It was a misogynistic idea."

Meanwhile at Naughty Dog, Druckmann had been working on the first two Uncharted games as a designer, and both turned out to be critical and financial successes. During this time he and co-worker Bruce Straley (who served as director on The Last of Us) would often have dinner to talk about ideas for what they wanted to do next, and there were a few concepts that they kept revisiting. One was Druckmann's core idea of a vulnerable character and their protector who eventually switch roles, while the other was of a mute girl who would work alongside the player. The conceit was that since she couldn't speak to you directly, all of the communication would take place through her actions. "The idea was that everything that happens between you is all based on gameplay mechanics," says Druckmann. At the same time the two had become fascinated with the concept of Cordyceps, a fungi that essentially turns ants into mindless zombies. And what they really wanted to do was combine all of these concepts into one game.

The result was a pitch for a problematic title called Mankind. Just like in The Last of Us, the game was set in a world where Cordyceps has leaped from insects to humans, turning the infected into dangerous monsters and bringing down civilization with them. The key difference was that in Mankind, the virus only affected women. An early version of Ellie was the only female who was immune, and Joel decided to protect her in order to bring her to a lab where a cure could potentially be created. But they weren't able to sell the idea, especially after several female Naughty Dog employees voiced their concerns. "The reason it failed is because it was a misogynistic idea," says Druckmann.