Mark Cerny has been working in the games industry since he was 17 years old, beginning at Atari before going on to architect both the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. He is now 62. In a new interview ahead of a major announcement, he described himself as “nearing the end” of his career — then spent several minutes explaining the project he wants to be remembered for more than any hardware specification.
Cerny has teamed up with Geoff Keighley, creator of The Game Awards, to launch the Nova Games Foundation: a non-profit fellowship programme aimed at supporting game design graduates at the very start of their careers.
What the Nova Games Foundation Actually Does
The programme is straightforward in its mechanics, if unusually generous. Each year, 20 graduates from 13 partner universities — including New York University and the University of Southern California — will be awarded $100,000 grants with no strings attached. The money is theirs to use as they see fit: building a prototype, paying rent while the project takes shape, or anything else.
Projects deemed by the Foundation to be “shaping up particularly well” based on milestone reviews can receive an additional $500,000 in funding. That second tier is not guaranteed; it is merit-based, assessed as the projects develop.
Applications open in December 2026, with the first recipients drawn from graduating classes of 2026 and 2027. John Maconga serves as executive director of the Foundation; Ashley Corrigan, the former director of GDC, heads the grants programme.
The numbers: 20 graduates per year · $100,000 each · up to $500,000 additional for standout projects · 13 partner universities · applications open December 2026.
Why Cerny and Keighley
Both founders have made multi-million-dollar personal donations to capitalise the Foundation. For Cerny, the timing connects to his comments about nearing the end of his career: the Fellowship is, in his own framing, a way to give back to an industry he has worked in for 45 years.
For Keighley, it extends a pattern of investment in gaming culture that has defined the latter years of his career. The Game Awards has functioned as a platform for indie announcements and emerging studios as much as for blockbuster reveals, and the Nova Games Foundation is a structural version of that same interest — direct funding rather than a spotlight moment.
The choice of a fellowship model rather than a prize or grant competition is deliberate. Fellowships carry ongoing support, mentorship, and accountability. Milestone reviews mean the Foundation has visibility into how the money is being used, without taking equity or creative control.
The State of Entry-Level Games Employment
The announcement arrives at a bruising moment for junior games employment. The industry has shed tens of thousands of roles over the past two years through studio closures and layoffs at companies including EA, Microsoft, and Sony itself. Breaking into the industry from a university programme is genuinely difficult in a way it was not a decade ago.
The Nova Games Foundation does not solve that problem — 20 fellowships per year is a fraction of the graduating classes at 13 institutions. But it offers a pathway for graduates who want to build something independently rather than queue for a gaming studio job that may not exist. Whether the projects it funds produce studios, games, or simply an understanding of how difficult the work actually is remains to be seen. Cerny, by his own admission, will not be around to watch all of it play out.
Cerny’s hardware credits include the PS4’s unified memory architecture, which changed how console games were built in the generation that followed, and the PS5’s custom SSD solution. He has also directed games — Knack was a PS4 launch title — and worked as a production consultant across dozens of Sony titles. The breadth of the career makes “nearing the end” feel like an understatement.
