Mark Cerny just added something to his growing list of accomplishments.
I’m not talking about the worldwide success of last year’s Spider-Man 2, on which Cerny worked as an executive producer. But something, in many ways, just as impressive.
“I just finished Animal Well and before that I was really excited about Neon White, which is my first speedrun,” he says.
“I actually platinumed it. That was a real challenge. I wasn’t sure if I could do it because the reflexes when I’m heading into my 60s are very different from the reflexes I had when I was a teenager playing in the arcades. I’m I’m glad I went for it. The precision and stamina you need to get through a game like that is different compared to these action figures like Spider-Man that I’ve worked on.”
Černý explains to us that despite his current role as the PlayStation’s hardware architect, what he finds interesting about the game isn’t necessarily what it does technically, but rather what New about. In fact, despite all the different roles Cerny has had in his 42-year career in the gaming industry, he has never stopped playing the role of “gamer”.
“I’m still a massive player,” he tells us. “I got into it 40 years ago because I was addicted to arcades.
“At the time, I was one of the best players in the country at Defender. That’s actually how I got my job at Atari. There was a reporter who was writing a book about arcade game strategies. We’re talking about an era so far back that there weren’t even gaming magazines, so if you wanted to learn arcade game strategy you’d go to the supermarket and there’d be a book at the checkout that would tell you how to play any game.And he interviewed me for Defender because I was a well-known local player . I ran into him later, told him I wanted to get into the business, and he very kindly called Atari Coin-Op and the rest is history.”
Cerny’s career has taken him from designing and programming games such as Marble Madness and Major Havoc in the 1980s, to producing and developing iconic platformers such as Sonic The Hedgehog 2, Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon in the 1990s, to where he leads today. creating the hardware for the PlayStation 4 and 5. There aren’t many gaming leaders who have been able to stay on top for more than four decades, and Černý believes diversity has been the key to that longevity.
“The industry has certainly changed a lot in the last 40 years, and one thing I’ve noticed is that people who have been very actively involved for so long tend to do a lot of things,” he says. “[Game developer] Amy Hennig and I talk about this a lot. In her case, she was a writer, animator, artist, director, and I’m sure a few other things. For me, because I’m a lot more technical, it’s been a programmer, a designer, a producer, an executive producer — which is a little bit different — I’ve run a small publisher, I’ve been a game director, and then of course there’s the hardware work today.”
He adds: “One way I look at it is if you want to have an interesting career in games, don’t do one thing. You don’t really want to be a physics programmer, because then you end up after a few years maybe just a programmer who integrates a physics middleware package. That’s nothing against physics programmers, some of whom are incredible, but I feel like after a few decades, yeah, you’re probably not doing as interesting a set of things as you would if you were constantly evolving your role.”
“It’s not at all bittersweet to say that instead of making games, I’ve decided to support the making of games.”
Of course, when Černý started, game developers didn’t really have roles.
“When I joined Atari in 1982, I had one job and it was a hybrid of programmer, designer and artist,” she explains. “You even had to create your own artwork. There were about 15 of us programmers/designers/artists, so the Atari Coin-Op produced 15 games. That was it. We didn’t see any real specialization until the 1990s.”
Cerny still does a lot of things, but he’s probably best known to the current generation of gamers as the lead architect behind the PlayStation 4 and 5.
We’re about halfway through the PS5’s life cycle, so we wanted to ask if there was anything the developers did with the hardware that surprised him.
“I was very surprised at how much developers use ray-tracing,” he begins. “To put it in, it was a big decision and actually quite late. I thought it wouldn’t be of much use at first, but if we look at generations, and a generation is about seven years, the software is built for ten years, and so later in the lifecycle we’ll start to see people using this technology, but instead we had launch titles that probably used it because we were working on console games that were a little difficult to get into on the PlayStation 3, I can be a little shy about very deep technology like this, but in this case my guess as to how things were going was completely wrong and I’m so happy to see the early adoption of this technology.
“Another thing that was surprising is the move to 60fps. Based on previous console lifecycles, I would have expected there to be a lot more games that would only be 30fps, just because the artwork can be so much more detailed, if you have more time to render, instead this time the almost universal rule was for games to run at 60.
“From a gaming perspective, it’s great. Players mostly prefer games with higher frame rates. I just didn’t expect such a departure from previous generations.”
Černý says that it takes about four years to build a console, and nowadays that’s less time than it takes to make some big AAA titles. Right now, there’s a lot of focus on the time it takes to make these games, and Cerny says that’s ultimately the path the developers chose.
“For consoles, I’m trying to reduce the time it takes [developers] get down to your games. I call it “triangle time”. All that said, if I want to display a triangle on the screen, how long does it take to create the engine technology that allows me to do that? It doesn’t have to sound very complicated. With the first PlayStation you could do it in a month, but consoles have become so complex that with the PlayStation 3 it took about six months to a year. So I’ve been working to reduce it. PlayStation 4 and 5 are much faster. It takes a month or two to get these basic graphics technologies up and running [those systems].
“I probably shouldn’t, but I spend a lot of time on the boards. And I see people asking … if the time to triangle has gotten so much shorter, then why does it take so many years to make a game? And the answer is whatever teams decide to do, they go after these massive creations that really take four or six years to put together.”
“If you want to have an interesting career in games, don’t do one thing… After a few decades, you’re probably not doing as interesting a set of things as you would if you were constantly evolving your role.”
Another shift in the development environment concerns cross-platform games. Developers are increasingly building their projects for as many platforms as possible. Even PlayStation is bringing its games to PC (albeit a few years after the console version). The problem is that consoles often contain custom technologies, and if developers use those technologies, it can hinder their ability to port the game elsewhere. Černý admits his team is aware of the challenge, but it’s actually an opportunity for them to lead.
“One of the exciting aspects of console hardware design is that we have freedom in what we put into the console,” Černý begins. we are not bound by any specific standards. So if we brainstorm that sound can become much more immersive and dimensional, if there’s a dedicated unit that’s capable of complex math, we can do that. Or, if the future looks like high-speed SSDs rather than HDDs, we can put an end-to-end system in the console—everything from flash memory to the software interfaces used by game developers—and get 100% adoption.
“I like to think that sometimes we’re even leading the way for the larger industry and that our efforts will ultimately benefit PC gaming as well. It’s a technically challenging example, but we had a very efficient GPU interface on PS4, and that may have spurred DirectX to become more efficient in response.Or to look at something more consumer oriented, I believe the release of the PS5 in 2020 with a very powerful onboard SSD has put pressure on the PC world to get the appropriate DirectStorage API into the hands of its players.
“There’s been a recent development here, which is that console exclusives that were created to run on custom PlayStation systems are now coming to PC. This conversion was easier than many thought. The main implication is that the minimum spec for the PC version the game is a little higher, maybe more CPU or more RAM to make up for the missing systems.”
Not only can gamers now play PlayStation games on PC, but they can also use PlayStation hardware, including DualSense and PlayStation VR 2. Meanwhile, on the other hand, we’re increasingly seeing AAA developers get mobile versions of their games. . The lines between platforms seem to be blurring, but Cerny feels that consoles continue to play a key role in the ecosystem.
He points to a fun video from Linus Tech Tips that tried to “kill” the PlayStation 5 by building a $500 gaming PC that outperformed the console.
“They had to get a used motherboard,” he says. “That was the only way they could build the equivalent of a PlayStation 5 for the price of a PlayStation 5. And if you’re using used parts… well, you can get a used PlayStation 5 on eBay for $300.
“I think as long as we continue to make this very nice package, the future of consoles is pretty bright.”
Černý is 60 years old this year, and it’s at moments like these that one can look back at where they’ve been. He says he tries not to get nostalgic, but if there are days he looks back on fondly, “it was probably back in the days when a single designer could lay out a third of a game, half a game, or even an entire game. .”
“As long as we continue to build this very nice package, the future of consoles is pretty bright.”
He explains: “I’m not talking about what we’d call an indie game today, but what we’d call a AAA game at the time. Something like Crash Bandicoot 2, where if you’re running along a path and there’s an apple you’ve picked up, chances are I was the one who put it there.”
Since the days of Atari, Cerny has been – step by step – moving away from pure game creation to more of a supporting role. And while that may be a shame, it allows him to work with different developers on all sorts of projects.
“I see incredible games being made,” he says. “It’s not at all bittersweet to say that instead of making games, I’ve decided to support the making of games. Because there’s really good work being done there.”
With a big birthday on the horizon, inevitably comes the question of retirement.
“It’s something that’s a bit close to my heart,” he admits, “but I believe I still have some time left in this industry.”
I suspect a few people reading this would be hoping to hear a definitive, “Retire? Never!’.
“Well, Clint Eastwood is a pretty good role model,” he concludes.
“At least the part where he’s still directing movies when he’s 90 years old, not the part where he started the movie with the chimpanzee.”