Fumito Ueda

Fumito Ueda (上田 文人, Ueda Fumito) is a Japanese video game designer. Ueda was director and lead designer of the PlayStation 2 video games Ico (2001) and Shadow of the Colossus (2005) developed by Sony Computer Entertainment.

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." Among his favorite subjects in school was art: a discipline which still plays an active role in Ueda's life, and which under different circumstances could have led to an alternate choice of occupation. "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 video game industry.