Mark Cerny and Geoff Keighley launch Nova Games Foundation to fund young designers

Mark Cerny and Geoff Keighley have established the Nova Games Foundation, a charitable fellowship program designed to support emerging game designers. According to Game File, the initiative - separate from The Game Awards or PlayStation - will provide $100,000 grants to 20 designers annually, with up to $500,000 additional funding for projects with exceptional potential.

This funding is accompanied by mentorship from experienced professionals in the industry. Recipients will maintain full ownership of their games and are free to seek out publishers and platforms of their choosing, with Nova offering assistance in connecting them. Applications for the 2026 and 2027 cohorts, which will be open to graduates from 13 affiliated university programs across eight countries, will begin in December.

The foundation's leaders, Cerny and Keighley, will personally fund the initiative with substantial personal contributions and anticipate continuing to invest as it expands. Keighley emphasized that the foundation's objective is not financial return but rather creative inspiration, aiming to assist new voices in game development and help them establish their careers.

The foundation has appointed John Maconga as executive director and Ashley Corrigan as head of grants. Notable figures such as Josef Fares, director of It Takes Two and Split Fiction, have also pledged donations and support. Cerny highlighted the program's mission to foster games as an artistic medium, citing titles like Neva, Abzu, Gorogoa, Stray, and Outer Wilds as examples of the kinds of works Nova intends to empower.

Keighley noted that the fellowship concept was influenced by his own unsuccessful application for a Rhodes Scholarship and the MacArthur Foundation's genius grants, as well as Jenova Chen, the USC game design graduate behind Flower and Journey.