There are studios that continue to stand out for pushing the boundaries of what is technically possible in the industry. We have clear examples with giants like Rockstar Games, who are aiming for photorealism with Grand Theft Auto 6 thanks to next-generation technology. Naughty Dog is always mentioned in this context. The technical strength of games like Uncharted or The Last of Us is not only due to the talent of the team, but also to the collective effort of a “secret” Sony team.
This is Sony’s “secret” team that enhances the graphical look of PlayStation games
This is how Keith Bruns, a member of the ICE team between 2003 and 2006, described it. For years, Mark Cerny led a team dedicated to the graphics engines of the first-party games of each PlayStation generation. ICE stands for Initiative for a Common Engine.
Cerny himself described it as follows: “The team’s goal was to investigate advanced graphics techniques or other technologies, and also to build and disseminate various early systems that could be used as other studios began their preliminary next generation game development.”
Its members’ duties included supporting the basic engine tools, creating “low-level” graphics components and debugging. If you worked with all the studios, why is Naughty Dog different from the other PlayStation teams? Quite simply, the ICE team is integrated into their structure. Its first members were drawn from the development team of the first Jak & Daxter.
In fact, some projects have always been seen as technical proving grounds for hardware in the gaming world. It happened on PS3 with Uncharted, while bringing to life one of the PlayStation icons of the modern era; the remastering of The Last of Us on PS4 followed suit. They have to be seen as the vanguard of technology within PlayStation studios, paving the way for others to take advantage of their advances. Guerrilla Games has recently taken on this role as well. The conception of the Decima engine is no coincidence.
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