Read from gamesindustry biz:
"The industry has certainly changed a lot in the last 40-something years, and one thing I've noticed is that the people who are very actively participating after that amount of time tend to have done a lot of things," he says. "[Game developer] Amy Hennig and I talk about this a lot. In her case, she's been a writer, an animator, an artist, a director, and I'm sure a few other things. For me, because I'm much more technical, it’s been programmer, designer, producer, executive producer – which is a 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, if you want to have an interesting career in games, don't do one thing. You really don't want to be the physics programmer, because then you end up being, after a couple of years, perhaps just the programmer who integrates the physics middleware package. This is nothing against physics programmers, some of whom are incredible. But if you have a very specific niche, my feeling is that, after a few decades, you're probably not doing as interesting a set of things as you would if you had kept evolving your role."
"I have been very surprised by the degree to which developers are using ray-tracing," he begins. "Putting that in, that was a big decision and actually a rather late one. I thought that this is not going to get much use initially, but if we look at generations, and a generation is seven years or so, software is created for ten years, and so later in the lifecycle we will start seeing people using that technology. But instead we had launch titles that were taking advantage of it. I guess, having worked on games for consoles that were a bit difficult to get into, like the PlayStation 3, I can be a little skittish about very deep technology like that. But in this case, my guess as to how things would go was totally wrong. And I am so happy to have seen the early adoption of the technology.
"The other thing that has been surprising is the push to 60 frames per second. Based on previous console lifecycles, I would have expected there to be a lot more games that are 30 frames per second only, just because the artwork can be so much more detailed if you have longer time to render it. Instead, the almost universal rule this time around has been the games run at 60.
Cerny says building a console takes about four years, and nowadays that's less time than it takes to make some of the big AAA titles. There is a lot of focus right now on the time it takes to build these games, and Cerny says that, ultimately, it's the developers that have chosen this path.
"With the consoles, one thing I've been trying to do is reduce the amount of time it takes [developers] to get going with their games. I call this 'time to triangle'. All that means is that if I just want to get a triangle up on the screen, how long does it take to build the engine technology that will allow me to do that? That might not sound very difficult. The first PlayStation you could maybe do that in a month, but the consoles got so complex that by PlayStation 3 that was taking probably six months to a year. So I've been working to bring that down. PlayStation 4 and 5 are much quicker. It takes a month or two before you have those fundamental graphics technologies up and running on [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 been greatly reduced, why is it then taking so many years to create a game? And the answer is that is what the teams are choosing to do. They are going after these massive creations that really do need four or six years to put together."
Another shift in the development landscape is around multiplatform games. Developers are increasingly building their projects for as many platforms as possible. Even PlayStation has been bringing its games to PC (albeit a few years after the console version). The issue is that consoles often have bespoke technologies in them, and if developers use these technologies, it might hinder their ability to port the game elsewhere. Cerny admits his team is aware of this challenge, but actually it's an opportunity for them to lead.
“One of the exciting aspects of console hardware design is that we have freedom with regards to what we put in the console," Cerny begins. "Or to put that differently, we’re not trying to build a low-cost PC, and we aren’t bound by any particular standards. So if we have a brainstorm that audio can become much more immersive and dimensional if there’s a dedicated unit that’s capable of complex math, then we can do that. Or if the future feels like high-speed SSDs rather than HDDs, we can put an end-to-end system in the console – everything from the flash dies to the software interfaces that the game creators use – and get 100% adoption.
"I like to think that occasionally we’re even showing the way for the larger industry, and that our efforts end up benefiting those gaming on PC as well. It’s a tech-heavy example, but on PS4 we had very efficient GPU interfaces, and that may well have spurred DirectX to become more efficient in response. Or to look at something more consumer-focused, I believe that releasing PS5 in 2020 with a very high-performance integrated SSD put pressure on the PC world to get their corresponding DirectStorage API into the hands of their gamers.
"There’s a recent development here, which is console exclusives that were created to run on bespoke PlayStation systems are now making their way to PC. That conversion has been simpler than many thought. The main consequence is that the minimum spec for the PC version of the game gets a bit higher, perhaps more CPUs or more RAM, in order to replace the missing systems.”
"The industry has certainly changed a lot in the last 40-something years, and one thing I've noticed is that the people who are very actively participating after that amount of time tend to have done a lot of things," he says. "[Game developer] Amy Hennig and I talk about this a lot. In her case, she's been a writer, an animator, an artist, a director, and I'm sure a few other things. For me, because I'm much more technical, it’s been programmer, designer, producer, executive producer – which is a 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, if you want to have an interesting career in games, don't do one thing. You really don't want to be the physics programmer, because then you end up being, after a couple of years, perhaps just the programmer who integrates the physics middleware package. This is nothing against physics programmers, some of whom are incredible. But if you have a very specific niche, my feeling is that, after a few decades, you're probably not doing as interesting a set of things as you would if you had kept evolving your role."
"I have been very surprised by the degree to which developers are using ray-tracing," he begins. "Putting that in, that was a big decision and actually a rather late one. I thought that this is not going to get much use initially, but if we look at generations, and a generation is seven years or so, software is created for ten years, and so later in the lifecycle we will start seeing people using that technology. But instead we had launch titles that were taking advantage of it. I guess, having worked on games for consoles that were a bit difficult to get into, like the PlayStation 3, I can be a little skittish about very deep technology like that. But in this case, my guess as to how things would go was totally wrong. And I am so happy to have seen the early adoption of the technology.
"The other thing that has been surprising is the push to 60 frames per second. Based on previous console lifecycles, I would have expected there to be a lot more games that are 30 frames per second only, just because the artwork can be so much more detailed if you have longer time to render it. Instead, the almost universal rule this time around has been the games run at 60.
Cerny says building a console takes about four years, and nowadays that's less time than it takes to make some of the big AAA titles. There is a lot of focus right now on the time it takes to build these games, and Cerny says that, ultimately, it's the developers that have chosen this path.
"With the consoles, one thing I've been trying to do is reduce the amount of time it takes [developers] to get going with their games. I call this 'time to triangle'. All that means is that if I just want to get a triangle up on the screen, how long does it take to build the engine technology that will allow me to do that? That might not sound very difficult. The first PlayStation you could maybe do that in a month, but the consoles got so complex that by PlayStation 3 that was taking probably six months to a year. So I've been working to bring that down. PlayStation 4 and 5 are much quicker. It takes a month or two before you have those fundamental graphics technologies up and running on [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 been greatly reduced, why is it then taking so many years to create a game? And the answer is that is what the teams are choosing to do. They are going after these massive creations that really do need four or six years to put together."
Another shift in the development landscape is around multiplatform games. Developers are increasingly building their projects for as many platforms as possible. Even PlayStation has been bringing its games to PC (albeit a few years after the console version). The issue is that consoles often have bespoke technologies in them, and if developers use these technologies, it might hinder their ability to port the game elsewhere. Cerny admits his team is aware of this challenge, but actually it's an opportunity for them to lead.
“One of the exciting aspects of console hardware design is that we have freedom with regards to what we put in the console," Cerny begins. "Or to put that differently, we’re not trying to build a low-cost PC, and we aren’t bound by any particular standards. So if we have a brainstorm that audio can become much more immersive and dimensional if there’s a dedicated unit that’s capable of complex math, then we can do that. Or if the future feels like high-speed SSDs rather than HDDs, we can put an end-to-end system in the console – everything from the flash dies to the software interfaces that the game creators use – and get 100% adoption.
"I like to think that occasionally we’re even showing the way for the larger industry, and that our efforts end up benefiting those gaming on PC as well. It’s a tech-heavy example, but on PS4 we had very efficient GPU interfaces, and that may well have spurred DirectX to become more efficient in response. Or to look at something more consumer-focused, I believe that releasing PS5 in 2020 with a very high-performance integrated SSD put pressure on the PC world to get their corresponding DirectStorage API into the hands of their gamers.
"There’s a recent development here, which is console exclusives that were created to run on bespoke PlayStation systems are now making their way to PC. That conversion has been simpler than many thought. The main consequence is that the minimum spec for the PC version of the game gets a bit higher, perhaps more CPUs or more RAM, in order to replace the missing systems.”
