Mark Cerny
Industry Leader
Class of 2020 Inductee
Mark Cerny is a video game designer, programmer, and producer.
In his early years, he spent time at Atari, Sega, Crystal Dynamics and Universal Interactive Studios before becoming an independent consultant under his own company Cerny Games in 1998.
Cerny’s first major success was the arcade game Marble Madness in which he, at age 18, acted as designer and co-programmer.
By the end of the 1980s, he joined Sega, initially working at Sega’s headquarters in Japan and then returning to the United States by 1991 to help establish the Sega Technical Institute.[8] There, he worked on various Master System and Genesis releases, most notably Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
Cerny left Sega in 1992 to join the newly formed Crystal Dynamics. He initially worked on 3DO games including Crash ‘n Burn (1993) and Total Eclipse (1994).
From 1994 to 1998, Cerny was involved with Universal Interactive Studios.
Cerny was initially a vice president of product development and later became its president.
Cerny opted to leave Universal to become a consultant under his own company, Cerny Games, that would allow him to keep working with Naughty Dog, Insomniac and Sony.
At Sony, Cerny was assigned as the PlayStation 4’s lead designer.
Cerny led development of one of the PlayStation 4’s launch games, Knack, as well as its sequel.
Cerny continued on as lead designer on Sony’s future consoles, including the handheld PlayStation Vita and for the PlayStation 5.
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Accolades:
The International Game Developers Association awarded Cerny with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards (IGDA) in 2004.
In 2010, at the 13th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, Mark Cerny was inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame.
95 credits on 69 games at Mobygames: