Fumito Ueda opens up about early game dev adventures and inspirations

"At the end, I wanted to work on my own ideas. I had some savings so I left the company, bought myself another computer, and my plan at the time was to create something for myself, on my own."

- Fumito Ueda reflects on why he left his first game development job, and how that decision eventually led him to pitch Ico while working at Sony. 

Last week, we highlighted an interview from the New Yorker that spoke with The Last Guardian creator Fumito Ueda. The author of that story, Simon Parkin, has now shared the full transcript of the interview that led to the original article. 

The transcript posted to Medium features a more in-depth explanation of many of the influential moments mentioned in the original New Yorker piece. Ueda recounts his early aptitude for art, and how different experiences throughout his life eventually led him to game development.

Interestingly, this interview shares details about Ueda's early, self-taught moments in creating computer graphics and how he eventually landed his first game development job at Warp.

"Shortly after [graduation], I saw that Sony was holding an art competition. I entered with an art installation piece," he explained. "I ended up receiving a judge’s stipend for it. I realized, however, I couldn’t live off this. So I collected the film projects I’d worked on and sent them off to the video game studio Warp. That was the first place I submitted the work to, and they offered me a job."

For more on Ueda, take a look at the full interview where he discusses the origins of the unintentionally-created cage motif featured throughout many of his creative works and also recounts how a character from a fondly-remembered childhood film shares resemblances with The Last Guardian's companion animal Trico.