# Evan Wells is Retiring from Naughty Dog [Co-President Evan Wells Announces His Retirement from Naughty Dog](https://www.naughtydog.com/blog/evan_wells_retirement_naughty_dog) by Evan Wells > I’ve been making games professionally for over 30 years, and Naughty Dog has been my home for over half my life! I’ve seen this studio grow from hire number 14 (me!) during the *Crash 3* days in 1998 to over 400 Dogs today. Every major life milestone I can track with a Naughty Dog project – I met my wife during *Crash Team Racing*, we took our honeymoon after shipping *Jak 2*, had our first child E3 week when we announced *Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune*, and our second child was born right in the thick of development on *The Last of Us*. Evan has worked on, shepherded, and released 13 games during his tenure at Naughty Dog. He became the co-president in 2004 when Naughty Dog’s founders, Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin, left. For nearly 20 years, he has led the studio. Evan started making games during his time at Stanford. There’s a great story about his time working on *Gex* during his senior year of college on [The AIAS Game Maker’s Notebook podcast](https://interactive.libsyn.com/naughty-dog-co-president-evan-wells). > I couldn’t be more excited about our current projects and not getting to see those games to completion is going to be hard. But we’ve never had a stronger team in place to ensure that we will deliver them in a way that will set industry standards and exceed all expectations. It’s hard not to wonder if that game total was supposed to be 14 with *The Last of Us* multiplayer game before that got sent back to the [[The Last of Us Factions Multiplayer Game Delayed|drawing board]]. What stands out more is “we will deliver them in a way that will set industry standards and exceed all expectations.” Evan and Naughty Dog have set *industry-wide* standards. And I would wager the company will continue to do so. One of my favorite tidbits I’ve learned about Evan over the years is that he competed in gymnastics for Stanford, while going to school and working on *Gex*. You can see him on the rings during the [1994 NCAA championships](https://youtube.com/watch?v=aSfsLuTlzWQ&t=666). I wish Evan all the best. I hope he enjoys his well earned retirement. Maybe he’ll get to play a Naughty Dog game someday that he didn’t work on.