Fumito Ueda

Japan · Born 1970 · Sony Computer Entertainment, genDESIGN · Game Director, Designer

A trained artist who directed Ico and Shadow of the Colossus using what he called "design by subtraction" — removing everything that was not essential until a few characters in an empty world remained.

Fumito Ueda was born in Tatsuno, Hyōgo, on 19 April 1970. He graduated from Osaka University of Arts in 1993 and first worked as a visual artist before entering games in 1995 at Warp, where he was an animator on Kenji Eno's Enemy Zero for the Sega Saturn. He found the work arduous, and Eno later said that although Ueda's digital art skills were lacking at the time, his talent for concepts and design was clear. Ueda joined Sony Computer Entertainment Japan in 1997 and directed Ico (2001), the story of a horned boy leading a mysterious girl by the hand through a vast, empty castle. He described his method as "design by subtraction": stripping away interface, dialogue and conventional game elements until only the essential experience remained, with sparse landscapes, bright overexposed light and near-silent characters. Shadow of the Colossus (2005) applied the same approach to a game consisting almost entirely of sixteen giant boss encounters across an empty land. His third game, The Last Guardian, endured a long development and was completed after he had left Sony, releasing in 2016. Ueda founded the studio genDESIGN in 2014 with former members of his team.