The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences will honor legendary game developer Mark Cerny with an induction into its Hall of Fame alongside luminaries such as Shigeru Miyamoto, Sid Meier, John Carmack, and Will Wright.
Cerny, a 25-year programming and design veteran, first gained fame for his 1984 hit Marble Madness while working at Atari. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s he worked extensively with Los Angeles-area PlayStation developers Naughty Dog and Insomniac Games, proving crucial to the early success of those studios. More recently he has worked with Sony's internal core development group, Ice Team.
"I'm thrilled to accept this award, which clearly has a lot to do with the drive and talent of the many teams that I've had the pleasure to work with over the years," he said in response to the announcement.
"Mark Cerny is the closest we have come to a modern-day Da Vinci," said AIAS president Joseph Olin in a statement. "What he does isn’t restricted to a single aspect of game creation, he really is a Renaissance man."
"He is a diversely accomplished game designer, producer, programmer and technologist, fluent in Japanese and one of the foremost Western experts on the Japanese game market. He’s also one of the only top-level independents in a business dominated by institutions."
“Mark is one of the only individuals who have managed to stay on the cutting edge of game development from the heyday of arcade games all the way up to the current generation of gaming consoles. Each step of the way he's redefined how the industry thinks about game design, technology, and production philosophies," said Naughty Dog co-president Evan Wells.
Cerny also received the similar Lifetime Achievement Award at 2004's Game Developers Choice Awards. He joins Wright, Miyamoto, and Meier as overlapping recipients of both honors.
He will be formally inducted during the AIAS' award show held during the DICE Summit in Las Vegas this February.
