Mark Cerny has revealed how he got the job as the PlayStation 4 lead system architect.
Delivering the opening keynote at the Develop Conference in Brighton today, Cerny explained that he pitched a number of high-ranking Sony executives after realising he had the passion, enthusiasm and skillset required for the job.
Having worked for years as a consultant for Sony Worldwide Studios, Cerny was one of the individuals who engaged with feedback developers provided for Sony's next console. The realisation that he should be more involved with the PlayStation 4 came to him after he spent his time-off researching the 30 year history of the X86 CPU, after feedback from first-party game programmers said it shouldn't be used in the PS4.
I just sacrificed my holiday to investigate some philosophical part for a console that I'm not really assigned to be working on, that won't be released for at least five years.
"I just wondered if this was true because the potential design space of the PlayStation 4 was going to be pretty limited if we couldn't use the X86," he said. "So I remember spending my November Holiday 2007 researching the 30-something history of the X86, from its creation in the 1970s all the way through to the most-recent enhancements. And my conclusion was that conventional wisdom hadn't been right, but progressive enhancements by intel and AMD over the years had finally resulted in something that the console game programmers could embrace.
"And then I started thinking, I just sacrificed my holiday to investigate some philosophical part for a console that I'm not really assigned to be working on, that won't be released for at least five years. That's passion, that's enthusiasm - maybe I should consider working on this project more deeply? And then I started thinking about my skill set: I'd been a designer and generalist programmer when I was making games at Atari; I'd become fluent in Japanese through my years at SEGA; I'd programmed graphics engines at Crystal Dynamics and Naughty Dog; I'd worked as an executive producer for a time at Universal Studios; and I was certainly willing and able to travel.
"I knew it was a bit audacious, but I then went to Shuhei Yoshida and I pitched him on the idea that I would be lead architect for the PS4, and I asked him if he thought it was possible. To my amazement, Shu said yes, it's a good idea. So I went to the head of the Worldwide Studio who also agreed, then I went to Masa Chatani who was the CTO at the time. To my amazement, Masa said yes, but I would have to leave the Worldwide Studio and work from the SCE headquarters instead because that, of course, is where the hardware project would be based."
I pitched Yoshida on the idea that I would be lead artichect for the PS4.
Cerny went on to explain that while leaving the Worldwide Studio where he'd worked as a consultant for years felt odd, it had been the perfect preparation for the task that now lay before him.
"Now when I say leave the Worldwide Studio, I wasn't really leaving them because I was never a member," he said. "I'd consulted on over a dozen Worldwide Studio games, and when I started working with SCE headquarters, that was once again as a consultant meaning I had no formal responsibility whatsoever because I was not part of company management; I was not even a company employee. If you contrast my position with that of Ken Kutaragi, who was both the chairman of SCE and the hardware division, the gap is huge. He had responsibility not just for the hardware but all aspects of the company. But in the long run I think my lack of formal status has been of great benefit to me and to SCE.
"As a consultant; I manage no employees; I'm not responsible for budgets; I don't give presentations to other departments of Sony; I don't track progress versus milestones; I don't negotiate contracts. I am free to think about where we need to be in five years time and work with the appropriate groups both inside and outside of the company in order to make that happen. In some ways it's a bit like being a director on a game title, which is to say that certainly there are artists, programmers and designers that make a game but they report to managers, not to the director. Certainly there's a budget that needs to be managed when you're making a game, but it's managed by the producer. The director's role is to shape the shared vision and communicate it to the team."
And this is exactly what Cerny did when awarded the position. He closed his keynote with an anecdote about a game development friend of his from Kyoto, who always admired Nintendo for one key reason: the company's management team had all worked together for around 30 years. Cerny suggested that, seeing as he, Yoshida and SCE president Andrew House are all the same age and have worked together for 20 years, he hopes that soon the same will be said about Sony.
Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Junior Editor and pre-ordered his PS4. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on IGN and on Twitter.
Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar