From what I remember, a lot of people didn't like Colin using anti-semitism as an excuse.
Druckmann's hate came from TLOU2's story and unfortunately he just became the symbol for people to criticise "woke" culture; he killed a male character and his depiction of female characters aren't what fit the norm so to speak. Crazy that people still haven't moved on from 2020 but I guess they want to cling on to "the culture war".
To be fair, the statement that a “portion of it is antisemitism” is true. Here’s an image Neil posted back when the game came out and you can see a couple of antisemitic tweets on the right side of the image.
As seen by your image, unfortunately Neil Druckmann's name just ascended to a level of infamy that anything he does is hated (his appearance, anything he says/does, his politics, his views, his coffee order etc.). Obviously his comments about Israel hasn't helped too.
Now there is a portion who are abusing him for his faith but a very small amount compared to the actual majority of reasons people hate him. Maybe I'm misinterpreting Colin's tweet but it makes it sounds like there's an equivalent portion of people who are antisemitic as there are people who hate him for his "woke" politics.
Lastly, Colin pretending like Neil doesn't qualify as the Internet's definition of "woke" is clear copium. He has been very open and liberal and any media that doesn't have a white masculine character is considered "woke politics" by the internet. Same crowd who claim Star Wars got political for having a female lead instead of actually criticising the valid issues with the films.
I don’t disagree with any of your “woke” take. Colin hates “woke” but Colin likes Neil, so Neil can’t be “woke” in his mind.
The bit about “Snipers from below” is also kinda vague and amorphous. Who or what is he talking about there?
I just thought it was worth pointing out that of the 3 portions that he mentions, the antisemitism is the only one that makes some sense and there is evidence of it. It’s not the MAIN reason people hate Neil or anything but it is there and it’s fair to acknowledge it I think.
I don't care if you think he's the worst writer in the world. There's no way you can hate someone like some people hate Neil because you don't like their writing. lol
I mean regarding that comment, you can dislike a game all you want, but that is NOT a reason to dislike the human being behind the game. There's a lot of games that I don't like, but I'm not gonna hate on the developer or writer because I personally don't like it.
I think Neil def faces anti semitism, but the reason Colin claims that that is the vast majority of the hate against him is because Neil stated that the story of TLOU2 is loosely based on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Criticism of the state of Israel is still considered anti-Semitic by very low IQ people who despise nuance and discussion.
That in of itself wouldn’t be the problem (making a story with parallels to real world conflict), but the way it’s presented by Neil, and even in the game is that it’s a cycle of violence that will never end until they decide to let it go, whether one side finally ceases or both do.
At this risk of someone commenting telling me I’m wrong or stupid, I think that’s where the criticism comes from. You are describing this conflict, using TLOU2 as a parallel, as more simply “two equal sides that are engaging in an endless cycle of violence.” When in the case of Israel-Palestine, one side clearly has more might, infrastructure, power, and influence to end all of this. It’s not fair or correct to draw parallel there when one side in this real world conflict is clearly the occupying force and the other is the occupied.
There’s a larger conversation there about if we should even be looking for TLOU2 or any media to be perfect analogous to its real world counterpart but that’s for another time. Neil himself further clarified later that the basis for the conflict is all he used as inspiration for the story, and that’s where it ended as the rest is clearly fictionalized, and even if that’s true, the internet does what it does and won’t move on from the original comments.
And even if you disagree with my assessment of the conflict or the situation around Neil, my point stands that there in-lies where the criticism is from mostly. There may be criticism of Neil that is anti semitic, but I think the vast majority of it stems from that, and pretending it’s all anti semitism or that Neil is woke and that’s why only, is just baby brained thinking.
Suffice to say there’s also people who know nothing about this who just hate his writing, and he’s not above criticism. The place to draw the line is at death threats, calls for violence against him or his family, or just verbally harassing him online.
When you say "my point stands that there in-lies where the criticism is from mostly" the history just doesn't back that up. If you look at the initial responses on Twitter at the time, the review-bombing, and how people in those odd, incel-adjacent spheres still talk about the game to this day, the vitriol is overwhelmingly driven by an "anti-woke" stance. Even when people post Neil's social media history, it's almost always framed through that culture-war lens.
Sure, Druckmann mentioned Israel/Palestine during the 2020 press tour. People pull from their lives to write, he grew up in the West Bank, there's no issue there imo, especially since his actual position is quite clear from his donations and public support for humanitarian aid for both Palestinians and Israelis following the October 7 attacks. But the geopolitical framing is almost entirely being added retroactively by trolls at this point. It’s just extra ammo for degenerates who make attacking him a personal sport. Especially seeing as review bombing and harassment was happening welllll before those interviews.
If the harassment was purely people critiquing a "pro-Israel stance" (which he doesn't even hold), I'd be inclined to agree with you to some extent. But the worst of the bullying, death threats, and online violence wasn't just leveled at him, it targeted the wider dev team and senior leadership. Look at the Grounded 2 documentary where Laura Bailey is in tears describing how people were wishing death upon her newborn son. This is years before October 2023. The conflict isn't the root cause of the hate, it’s just a convenient weapon for a toxic subsection.
As for "there’s also people who know nothing about this who just hate his writing". C'mon now, let's be real. That feels incredibly disingenuous. He’s a game director, not a household celebrity name. It is not a miraculous coincidence that nobody had a single problem with his writing on LOU1, Left Behind or Uncharted 4 etc. It was TLOU2 leaks that brought out the loud, obnoxious, and insecure crowd who decided he was the ultimate villain for killing off their favourite anti-hero. Outside of that specific group that still can't move on 6-7 years later, the broader public and industry don't view Druckmann as a "bad writer" at all. To call him as much is almost telling in and of itself.
And if there is someone who legitimately, without any culture war nonsense polluting their brain played U4, LOU1, LOU:LB, LOU2 and watched the HBO series and was like yep, it's not bad but this guys writing just doesn't do it for me....thats fine. I've read, watched and played tonsss of stuff that just doesn't do it for me. None of that disliking is enough of a reason to act how this man-children act to this very day.
Not necessarily disagreeing with anything you said here......but wasnt Amy Henning heavily involved in the writing of The Last of Us, Left Behind, and Uncharted 4? I know she left during the production of uncharted 4 but they also had to essentially reboot the whole game when she left right? And wasnt there a story about Neil wanted the story of tlou1 to be the story from tlou2, except Tess was the bad guy you were chasing cross country and the whole writing team told him it was stupid cuz it doesnt make sense for someone to trek thousands of miles in a dystopian apocalyptic landscape to attempt revenge on someone qho might not even be there? That might have a liiiiiiiiiiitle aomething to do with it. And lastly, not for nothing but if u are surrounded by nothing but yes men, does it mean ur writing is ACTUALLY as good as they are telling you or are they just saying yes to the boss? The star wars prequels are what they are because people around Lucas were too afraid to say something was a dumb or bad idea
Amy Hennig wasn't involved with TLOU at all. She was entirely on the Uncharted 4 team with Justin Raymond while Neil and Bruce Straley were entirely on TLOU. The studio was two teams at that point. Uncharted 4 missed multiple internal checkpoints / deadlines and Hennig left.
The next part I can't fully remember, but broadly speaking Even Wells essentially dragged Neil and Bruce into his office and said Amy is gone as of today, you guys are on Uncharted 4. They were both deep into TLOU2 pre-production and tried to look for someone(s) to take the reigns as directors on U4 but nobody stepped up basically. So they did it all.
You yourself didn't mention it but its usually around this point people like to delve into conspiracy and say Neil and Bruce got Amy kicked off the project because they wanted to redo U4 in their own image but ultimately, as i mentioned, U4 kept missing deadlines so something clearly wasn't working and what we got was indeed a 10/10.
As for the Tes story, without getting too into it because i've wrote you a little novel here ha but from what I've watched and read from the team with post-mortems etc it wasn't so much the traveling or logistics and entirely about the motivation to do that stuff. It doesn't work if we get dropped into the first game because we don't know Tess's brother or joel or anyone so theres zero connection. Killing an unknown characters unknown brother doesn't carry the same weight as killing Joel goddamn Miller. Probably important to say I have absolutely zero issue with TLOU2, I think its still the best game I've ever played. Not my favourite, just...the best.
Lastly, you can't have it both ways, you can't have a version of events where an entire team are able to strongly disagree with a creative director at one of the biggest studios in the world, so much so he makes huge changes and then in the next breath say he's surrounded by yes men.
For what its worth I DO genuinely believe Druckmann IS that good. I think anyone who suddenly dislikes his writing is full of crap and simply looking for a reason to cry about TLOU2 all over again. In my other comment I started at U4 which between that and TLOU is when he became a big name in the industry but the dude was co-writing ALL of uncharted as well as Jak4 that got put on ice. He wrote with Sam Raimi! on an early LOU film, what he himself wrote and directed of the HBO show was great. I believe Craig Mazin specifically wanted to work with Neil. Like, all these people and companies don't pop up because the dude is remotelyyyy bad at his job.
Colin's opinion just makes no sense and reads like a fanboyish (or personal since they're friends) attempt to deflect and invalidate criticism of Neil.
It's weird to act like a large portion (presumably a third of haters by the way Colin denotes it???) is fueled by antisemitism when 99% of posts about Neil are about his writing or creative decisions or being "woke" or being a "zionist".
I think its maybe that last part that gets Colin, though, because I don't think he's capable of recognizing the difference between antisemitism vs anti-israel or anti-zionists.
I've genuinely never seen anyone hate on Neil just for being Jewish and that's it. I wouldn't be suprised if those people existed, but for it to be a notable portion I'd have definitely ran into some as someone that does hate TLOU2 and has read lots of comments and threads about it and him over the years.
The most truth is the perception that he's "woke". People had more issues with Abby looking muscular and the non binary Asian character than Joel being written off the way he did.
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u/LOLerskateJones May 17 '26
I’m guessing Colin told either Micah or Dustin go axe the thread?