Mark Cerny

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Mark Cerny (2010)

Mark Cerny (* 1964 ) is President of Cerny Games, which he founded in 1998. He has worked in the computer game industry as a game designer , programmer , producer, manager and consultant. As lead system architect, Cerny was responsible for the technical design of the PlayStation 4 game console . In 2004 he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Game Developers Association and in 2010 he was inducted into the AIAS Hall of Fame by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences .

Career

Personal and beginnings at Atari

Cerny's parents were employees at Berkeley University, where he grew up. According to his own statements, he skipped some school classes and attended the first university courses at the age of 13. Cerny is married to a Japanese woman.

Cerny, a programming and arcade game fanatic, began his career in 1982 at the age of 17 as an employee of Atari . In those early days of game development, the development teams were still small and those involved in the project performed a greater number of tasks than they do today. Cerny's first big success is usually called Marble Madness , where he worked as a designer at the age of 18 and was published by the successor company Atari Games .

Activities for Sega and Crystal Dynamics

In 1985, Cerny moved to the Japanese game publisher and console manufacturer Sega for seven years , for which he worked in both Japan and the United States . There he worked on Sonic the Hedgehog 2, among other things . In Japan he met his future wife at a friend's wedding. In 1992 he went to Crystal Dynamics , where he worked in product development. In 1993, Cerny learned of Sony's plans to enter the computer game market with a new game console. Cerny, who mastered the Japanese language from his time at Sega, traveled to Tokyo to request the provision of a developer kit for Crystal Dynamics, which Sony only gave to Japanese developers at the time. One of the reasons was that the license agreement was only in Japanese. Cerny, although not authorized to sign, signed the contract and received a developer kit approved through the advocacy of Sonymanager Shuhei Yoshida . Crystal Dynamics became the first American development studio to receive a license to develop PlayStation games. The professional collaboration with Yoshida remained a constant in Cerny's career in the years that followed.

Development of the universal games division

In 1994 Cerny became vice president of the newly formed Universal Interactive Studios , and in late 1996 president. For his employer, he signed the game developers Naughty Dog and Insomniac Games , with whom he worked for the PlayStation on the game series Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter (Naughty Dog) and Spyro the Dragon and Ratchet & Clank (Insomniac Games). Above all, Crash Bandicoot developed into one of the most successful titles of the first PlayStation console. The marketing was taken over by Sony Computer Entertainment , whose managing director Ken Kutaragi personally appointed Shuhei Yoshida as producer for Cerny's development studios. Yoshida also gave Cerny exclusive access to a development version of the PlayStation 2 as the first American developer to give Naughty Dog and Insomniac Games the opportunity to develop games for the new console to go on sale in 2000.

Activities for Sony and development of the PlayStation 4

In 2001, Sony took over Naughty Dog, and Insomniac Games also signed a contract with the console manufacturer. At Yoshida's efforts, the so-called ICE team, I nitiative for a C ommon E ngine, was founded out of Naughty Dog, which was supposed to develop basic development tools for all Sony development studios for the upcoming PlayStation 3 . Yoshida also succeeded in loosening the strict separation of hardware and software teams within Sony and embedding members of the ICE team in the hardware department at Tokyo headquarters, including Mark Cerny at Yoshida's request.

In 2008 Yoshida moved back to Japan as the new President of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios . In the same year, Cerny was named lead system architect for the development of the next game console, the PlayStation 4 , with Yoshida's support . Cerny had applied for the post, but the appointment of the software specialist to the position of senior hardware developer was considered unusual. In collaboration with Yoshida, Cerny tried to change the culture of development. The previous developments were shaped by the authority of the PlayStation inventor Ken Kutaragi, which also included the strict separation between hardware and software departments. Yoshida, who is responsible for all internal game developments, was asked only two to three weeks before the first public presentation of the PlayStation 3 to provide a presentable game prototype for demonstrating the built-in motion sensors. The presence of the sensors had not been known to Yoshida before. Overall, the PlayStation 3 met with criticism from software developers, among other things because the programming for the unusual PlayStation hardware (e.g. cell processor ) was considered difficult. Accordingly, the software range at the start of the PlayStation 3 turned out to be very thin and, together with the high price of the console, led to a poor sales start and ultimately to the loss of market leadership. Instead, Cerny opted for a collaborative approach and involved both internal and external development teams in the design of the console in order to adapt it to the needs of the game producers (see section on the work philosophy). This also included turning away from individual processor solutions and instead switching to the common x86 architecture . The decision to double the main memory from four to eight gigabytes was made after complaints from Randy Pitchford , CEO of the independent developer Gearbox Software . Ultimately, Sony received positive approval from independent developers for its design decision. With the customer in mind, the aim was to keep the sales price as low as possible. In fact, the PlayStation 4 came on the market with a starting price of 100 dollars / euros lower than its competing console, the Xbox One .

On February 20, 2013, at the PlayStation 4's official launch in New York City , Mark Cerny was officially introduced as the console's chief systems architect. Cerny also presented the launch title of the Knack console that he had developed for the first time .

Development of the PlayStation 5

The performance of the PlayStation 5 was presented in a live stream on March 18, 2020 personally by Mark Cerny, who was once again working as lead systems architect.

Work philosophy

Based on his personal experience of the “dos and don'ts” of the game industry, he developed the so-called “Cerny Method”, a strategy for developing computer games. His method favors a freely configurable pre-production, in which the usability of the game concept is tested before full production begins. He argues, for example, that if the first level produced does not inspire the customer, the entire game idea should be abandoned before too much energy is invested in the project. In order to be able to determine this, Cerny recommends the development of a short, high-quality prototype representative of the game concept, which is playable and can be evaluated with the help of target group tests. The feedback gained from this can then be used to improve the game. In this way, the risk can be minimized that a production bypasses the interests of the players. Cerny first used this method in the mid-1990s when he had people approached on the street and invited them to the development studio for test purposes. The reaction of the testers was recorded with the aid of video recorders and then evaluated. This approach has been improved over time and has had a major impact on game development.

Honors

The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) awarded Cerny the prize for his life's work in 2004 as part of the Game Developers Choice Awards . The rationale was: “It's hard to find an all-rounder that not only has the high-level vision for great game design, but that can also act as the putty that holds all the pieces together. His unusual but highly efficient methods have given us some of the most entertaining games in history. ”He has been described as an“ excellent team worker ”. His success is based not only on the number of games he has worked on, but also on their quality and commercial success, which is reflected in sales of several million copies.

Mark Cerny was inducted into the Hall of Fame at the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) 13th Interactive Achievement Awards in 2010 . AIAS President Joseph Olin justified this as follows: “Of all game developers, Mark Cerny comes closest to a modern Da Vinci . What he does isn't limited to a single aspect of game development, he's really a renaissance person. He is a versatile game designer, producer, programmer and technologist, speaks fluent Japanese and is one of the leading western experts on the Japanese game market. He is also one of the few high-ranking self-employed in a business area that is dominated by institutions. "

Ludography (excerpt)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Interview with Mark Cerny
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Exclusive: The American Who Designed the PlayStation 4 and Remade Sony
  3. ↑ Douglas C. Perry: IGN: Interview with Mark Cerny ( English ) In: IGN . Retrieved November 26, 2008.
  4. ↑ Ken Horowitz: Interview: Mark Cerny ( English ) In: sega-16.com . Retrieved on November 26, 2008.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.sega-16.com  
  5. ↑ a b c d PS4 and Mark Cerny: “All Part of Shuhei Yoshida's Master Plan” Who is the Real Father of the PS4?
  6. ^ Naughty Dog discusses being acquired by Sony
  7. ↑ Shuhei Yoshida and Mark Cerny talk about the history of the Playstation
  8. ↑ “If You Go With 4GB of GDDR5” RAM on PS4, “You Are Done,” Randy Pitchford Told Sony
  9. ↑ PS4: "Wise technical decisions" - id software boss praises PlayStation 4
  10. ↑ This is PlayStation 4: All the big announcements from last night ( English ). Accessed February 21, 2013.
  11. ↑ url = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph8LyNIT9sg
  12. ↑ Mark Cerny: Method Lecture for GDC Europe ( English ) Accessed February 23, 2013.
  13. ^ John McLean: Gamasutra - Conversations From GDC Europe: Mark Cerny, Jonty Barnes, Jason Kingsley ( English ) In: Gamasutra . UBM, plc . Retrieved November 26, 2008.
  14. ^ A b John Breeden II: A Lifetime of Achievement . In: Gameindustry.com . Archived from the original on October 17, 2007. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved November 26, 2008. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.gameindustry.com
  15. ↑ Production Genius Mark Cerny to Receive IGDA's Lifetime Achievement Award at 4th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards ( English ) In: Official website . International Game Developers Association . February 9, 2004. Archived from the original on June 15, 2011. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved March 16, 2010. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.igda.org
  16. ↑ Mark Cerny Iinducted Into AIAS Hall of Fame ( English ) In: Gameindustry.com . Archived from the original on April 29, 2013. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved January 28, 2013. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.gameindustry.com
personal data
SURNAME Cerny, Mark
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American programmer and computer game developer
DATE OF BIRTH 1964