PlayStation architects Mark Cerny and The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley have launched the Nova Games Foundation, a philanthropic fellowship that will hand $100,000 grants to 20 young game designers per year, with roughly a quarter of recipients eligible for up to $500,000 in additional funding.

According to Game File, which first reported the story, the program is unaffiliated with The Game Awards or PlayStation. Cerny, lead architect of the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, and Keighley, host of The Game Awards, Summer Game Fest and Opening Night Live, are personally funding the foundation with multi-million-dollar contributions of their own and expect to keep injecting capital as it scales.

The model is grant-based, not investment. "Nova is philanthropy: we aren't taking equity or looking to recoup the grants," Keighley told Game File. "The return we're hoping for is creative - helping new voices make games and find their footing."

That structure directly changes the economics for early-career designers. Recipients retain full ownership of their games and can pursue publishers and platforms of their choosing, with Nova able to help make introductions. Funding also comes with mentorship from industry veterans, giving grantees access to production and business guidance that university programs rarely provide.

Who qualifies

Applications open in December and are limited to 2026 and 2027 graduates from 13 affiliated university programs across eight countries. Confirmed partners include TH Köln in Germany, RMIT in Australia, Cnam-Enjmin in France, Abertay University in Scotland, and the US pairing of NYU and USC.

The restriction to specific institutions narrows the initial pool considerably, positioning Nova as a curated pipeline rather than an open competition. For the affiliated programs themselves, the fellowship adds a concrete post-graduation funding path that could sharpen recruitment pitches to prospective students.

Staffing and backers

The foundation has built out an operational team: John Maconga joins as executive director, and former Game Developers Conference director Ashley Corrigan takes the role of head of grants. Josef Fares, director of It Takes Two and Split Fiction, has pledged a donation and support.

"I'm proud to support Nova because it gives the next generation of creators the freedom to explore their creativity and hopefully bring their unique visions to life," Fares said in a statement.

Cerny framed the initiative as support for games as "an artistic medium," citing Neva, Abzu, Gorogoa, Stray and Outer Wilds as examples of the kind of work Nova hopes to enable - smaller, auteur-driven titles that sit outside mainstream blockbuster budgets.

Keighley said the fellowship concept drew partly on his own unsuccessful application for a Rhodes Scholarship, the MacArthur Foundation's "genius grants," and Jenova Chen, the USC game design graduate behind Flower and Journey.

What it means for the industry

For studios and publishers, the program creates a new class of funded independent designers entering the market with capital, mentorship and no equity obligations - candidates who may arrive at publishing negotiations with stronger leverage and more finished prototypes than typical first-time creators.

At $2 million in base grants annually, plus the top-up tranche of up to $500,000 for standout projects, Nova's annual commitment is modest against venture funding in games, but its no-recoupment terms are unusual in a market where most early-stage money comes as equity investment or publishing advances recouped against revenue.

The December application window will be the first concrete test of demand among the 13 affiliated programs' graduating cohorts, and the identity of the inaugural 2026 grantees will signal what kind of projects - and business models - the foundation's vetting process favors.