Fumito Ueda

is a video game designer born in Tatsuno, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan in 1970. Ueda is director and lead designer of the PlayStation 2 video games "Ico" and "Shadow of the Colossus".

He described himself as a very inquisitive child saying "I enjoyed catching and keeping living things, such as fish or birds. Other than that, I liked both watching and making animation. Basically, I seemed to be interested in things that moved." At school, his favorite subjects included art, which still plays an active role in Ueda's life and could have wound up being his career. "If I was not in the games industry, I would want to become a classical artist. Though I regard not only games but also anything that expresses something - be it films, novels or manga - as forms of art."

Ueda graduated from the Osaka University of Arts in 1993.

In 1995, after trying to make a living as an artist, Ueda decided to pursue a career in the videogame industry.

He joined video game developer WARP and worked as an animator on the game Enemy Zero for the Sega Saturn under ex-video game director Kenji Eno. His time there is best described as arduous [ [http://www.tigmagazine.com/gff07.html ] ] , as the game was behind schedule and everyone on the project had to work more than normal to meet the release deadline. In 1997, Ueda successfully joined SCE as a first-party developer.

His games have achieved popular cult status and are distinguished by a severe economy of plot and scenario, illustrated with overexposed, desaturated light and sparse dialogue. This approach, which he describes as "design by subtraction," lends his work an existential tone.

Future Projects

In February 2007, Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu reported that Ueda and his team were working on a new game for the PlayStation 3. No details about the unnamed title were revealed. In the August edition of PlayStation Magazine Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida described the game as "really, really good". Yoshida also commented that both "Ico" and "Shadow of the Colossus" took 4 years to develop as a hint that the game is under production, but is not close to release. [ [http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=204425 ] ]

The genesis of "Ico"

Among other tools, Ueda was an owner of the Commodore Amiga computers (A500 first then A4000). This is uncommon in Japan where this range of computers was not very popular. During these years he learned to use Newtek Lightwave, and eventually the first mock-ups and testbeds for "Ico" were created with Lightwave 3D. The main inspiration of "Ico" came from Eric Chahi's Amiga classic " Another World", which was called "Outer World" in Japan.

Works

*"Enemy Zero" (1997) - Animator
*"Ico" (2001) - Director/Lead Designer/Lead Animator/Cover Design/Art Direction
*"Shadow of the Colossus" (2005) - Director/Lead Designer
*Unnamed PlayStation 3 project

References

External links

* [http://www.guardian.co.uk/computergames/story/0,,1550802,00.html Guardian Interview]
* [http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=132780 CVG Interview]