Fumito Ueda talked with Simon Parkin from ‘New Yorker’ and discussed the work on his most recent game.
The Last Guardian was in development for more than 10 years. Although originally announced in 2007 for PS3, but it was in development long before that time. The game went through development hell, was almost shut down, but for some unbelievable reason finally made it to the store shelves. To celebrate this incredible event, Simon Parkin talked a little bit with the designer and director Fumito Ueda.
The Last Guardian is currently available for PlayStation 4. The game features a child and a strange creature, who looks like a cat with wings. Together they must explore the world and escape their trap.
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The game designer is almost 50 years old now, although we always thought of him as a young ‘beginner developer’. In his own words, Ueda always wanted to create art and video games presented him with this opportunity. Here’s an abstract from the original article.
Ueda’s own journey has been roundabout. In his final year at art college, he told me, he chose abstract art as his major, figuring that, when faced with a looming deadline, it would be easier to scrawl something figurative than literal. “I also liked that, behind those abstract images, there was always an idea,” he said. “That set me thinking about art in terms of ideas, rather than depictions. What could I make that had a clear idea behind it, looked unique, and yet wasn’t alienating?” Ueda neglected to apply for jobs during his final months of study, as is customary in Japan, so when he graduated he sold his motorbike to fund the purchase of a computer. The machine he chose, the Amiga, had almost no established users in Japan, and the operating system was written entirely in English. Dictionary in hand, Ueda taught himself computer graphics. “It wasn’t my original intent,” he said. “I was interested in multimedia, and using that to artistic ends. It was this exciting territory between full-scale installation and drawing. A new, emergent form. But soon enough I felt like there was something I could discover in or express through the computer. […] Video games became the place for me to express my art. It is perhaps the best pairing there could be.”
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The game was in development for so long, that technically it’s impossible to say if it’s a PS4 or a PS3 game.
You can read the full article here.