Inside Fumito Ueda's Philosophy — Subtracting Toward Emotional Space

Introduction — inside the word "subtraction"

Fumito Ueda is a Japanese game designer, known worldwide for three works: ICO (2001), in which a boy leads a girl by the hand through a walled castle; Shadow of the Colossus (2005), in which a lone rider fells sixteen giants with a single sword; and The Last Guardian (2016), in which a boy and a huge beast come to understand each other. He is not strictly a puzzle designer, but ICO's castle is itself a question to be solved, which places him firmly in the lineage of puzzle-adventure design this site cannot ignore.

Whenever Ueda is discussed, the phrase "design by subtraction" appears. Yet I feel that phrase has taken on a life of its own. Removing elements does not make you Ueda. What he cut, and what he was trying to leave behind on the other side of that cutting, is where the person lives. This essay is not a review of his games; it is a reading of Fumito Ueda the man, grounded only in what he has said publicly. I draw mainly on four interviews.

For the record, everything I quote comes from primary sources whose text I have read; I will not put words in his mouth. Ambiguous statements I keep ambiguous. Only in the final paragraph will I insert my own interpretation.

Background — from would-be painter to Amiga to games

Ueda is from Tatsuno City in Hyogo Prefecture, and majored in abstract art at Osaka University of Arts. He recalls the choice with a joke: representational, realistic art takes time, but with abstract art "you can always just slap something together two days before the deadline" (CONTINUE Vol.25, 2005). He was not a serious student, but as graduation neared he began to worry that "if I squandered my time like this, I might never be able to create what I wanted to create."

The turning point was a computer called the Amiga. He sold his motorcycle to buy one and taught himself 3D CG. After a stint at a Kansai CG studio he joined the game company WARP, working on movie sequences for D and Enemy Zero. He left after a year and a half for SCE (now Sony Interactive Entertainment), where he was first given the chance to plan and direct, and ICO was born.

What is telling is that he entered the industry as a maker rather than a gamer. "I was away from games in my undergraduate days," and "I was not so much interested in making ordinary games," he says (GIGAZINE, 2017). This position as an outsider is a key to understanding his later design thinking. In 2014 he founded his own studio, genDESIGN, giving only one reason for going independent: "to make products smoothly" (GIGAZINE, 2017).

Philosophy — a game defined by what is not there

The core of Ueda's philosophy is compressed into one of his own lines. Of ICO he said: "It has no tutorial, no gauges. In many senses, it's a game defined by what is not there" (CONTINUE, 2005). This is the starting point of the so-called design by subtraction. But cutting is not the goal in itself. In a 2002 developer interview he said, "Whether it was the girl's animation or the details of the map, I didn't hold back on removing and subtracting elements as needed. If something felt unfinished or lacking, then I'd remove it" (ICO Developer Interview, 2002).

Why cut? His motive is surprisingly deep: the question of "why people stop playing video games." "No one 'graduates' from movies, nor do they stop listening to music as they get older. For some reason though, they stop playing video games. Why was that, I wondered?" (CONTINUE, 2005). Out of this concern he repeatedly says he wants "people who don't play games" to play his. Asked whether his philosophy of making games for non-gamers had changed, Ueda answered, "That hasn't. Those are exactly the people who I want to play" (CONTINUE, 2005).

A second pillar is a faith in games as a medium. "I want to see video games standing on par with other mediums of entertainment—not be subsumed by them. That is to say, I want games to do things that only video games can do" (CONTINUE, 2005). This is why he hates stretches where the player can do nothing. "In the future video games must get away from having scenes where the player has absolutely no control... so they don't feel their time is being wasted meaninglessly" (CONTINUE, 2005). He cuts, it seems, precisely to preserve this sense of what a game uniquely is.

Obsessions — betting every resource on a single relationship

Look across his works and recurring habits appear. First, Ueda does not begin from story or world. His partner Kenji Kaido testified, "He doesn't begin with a story or world, he just suddenly starts crafting his vision" (ICO Interview, 2002). Ueda himself says, "I've never made anything according to a traditional game design planning document. But strong visual images do come to me," and that the world and story "all take a backseat to the functionality and consistency of the game mechanics" (ICO 2011 Interview). For Trico too, "I think I've started from the character design of Trico" (GIGAZINE, 2017).

Second, an obsession with direct communication through "holding hands." On ICO's origin he said, "I wanted to do something that would effect more direct communication between the characters in-game, and that's how I came up with the 'holding hands' mechanic" (2002). His investment in that single point is total: "You've got to know how to spend your resources. In ICO we put all our money on Yorda" (2011). Boy and taller girl, rider and the horse Agro, boy and the beast Trico—his works consistently revolve around a hierarchical bond with a partner who cannot speak your language.

Third, he arrives at realism not by adding but by "removing the unnatural." On Trico's lifelikeness he explained, "It is an outcome of removing unnatural parts over and over again. There are no shortcuts to make them look real" (GIGAZINE, 2017). Of the boy's delicate movements he says the aim was "to make him a convincing character, rather than showing him lovely" (GIGAZINE, 2017). Cuteness, it seems, is not the goal but a by-product of conviction.

Failures and how he got through them — throwing away two years, enduring seven

Ueda does not hide his failures. ICO was originally developed for the PlayStation, then moved mid-development to the PS2. He describes the feeling: "It felt like, damn, to throw away two years of work and start all over. But on the other hand, it was like, hey, now we actually have a shot at completing this thing" (CONTINUE, 2005). And he admits ICO "didn't sell all that well." "In a game of win or lose, I had to figure out how I could win. Although in the end, ICO didn't sell all that well" (CONTINUE, 2005).

Even after release he was tormented more by doubt than confidence. "Any praise was far outweighed by the criticism in my mind: I should have done more of this; how can we be releasing it in this state? I even started to doubt some of the basic decisions: maybe there should have been a life gauge? maybe we should have had more than one enemy?" (CONTINUE, 2005). He also hit a wall writing dialogue: "In the process of creating the dialogue, I realized I wasn't very good at it. That's why I pledged that my next game would have no dialogue—a story, but no dialogue" (CONTINUE, 2005). Turning a failure into the design principle of the next work is very Ueda.

His greatest trial was the roughly seven-year development of The Last Guardian. He admits it plainly: "To be brutally honest there were moments where I thought, 'Maybe this won't get out there'" (Game Informer, 2015). There was a time his motivation ran out. "There was a time when I couldn't make progress in the creative part. I had no subject of creating things in those days, so it was the most difficult time for me" (GIGAZINE, 2017). His way through was strikingly plain: "To keep my motivation up I expose myself to excellent works, or look at the fans of those works. I get motivation from them" (GIGAZINE, 2017).

Design dilemmas — authorship vs. commerce, and the danger of majority rule

The tension Ueda most clearly frames as a dilemma is that between authorship and commerce. "There's the spirit of the artist that wants to create its own work, and there's the knowledge that your creation must succeed in a business context. If you're going to create something in a company with others, you need both. But the balance isn't easy to find" (ICO 2011 Interview). He is not a man who swings fully to one side; he seems to have walked this tightrope consciously throughout his career.

The conflict surfaces on the development floor too. During ICO's making, colleagues constantly asked, "Why don't you add an icon above the girl's head so the player can know how she's feeling?", questioned the merit of the hand-holding system, and said, "Shouldn't there be more enemies?" (CONTINUE, 2005). Convincing programmers what kind of game it would be, he admits, "is still the biggest problem" even today (CONTINUE, 2005). He has always been pulled between protecting his vision and persuading his team.

And there is his wariness of majority rule. For the colossus-slaying scene in Shadow of the Colossus he temporarily laid sad film music where a triumphant fanfare was expected; the staff burst out laughing. From this he draws a lesson: "Deciding things by majority has its merits, but I think there's a danger that lies in that too" (ICO 2011 Interview). What everyone judges correct is not necessarily correct for the work—that, it seems, is what he believes.

Influences — two Amiga games, and two un-game-like games

The influences Ueda names again and again are strikingly concrete. First, two cinematic Western games: "I did play a lot of Prince of Persia on the Gameboy, and I also love Out of this World [Another World] and Flashback" (ICO Interview, 2002). Sparse dialogue, cinematic staging, the emotion between two characters—ICO's skeleton is clearly in this lineage. Incidentally, Another World's creator Éric Chahi is the subject of another study on this site. Seeing Ueda carry that bloodline makes the lineage feel like a single connected line.

But he was also aware of the danger of copying directly. "If I made a game just like Flashback, I was sure that Japanese players wouldn't like it. However, I thought Japanese players would get into it if I presented it with the same degree of stylishness that PaRappa and I.Q. had" (CONTINUE, 2005). His very reason for choosing SCE, he says, was "probably all down to PaRappa the Rapper. That and I.Q." (CONTINUE, 2005). Grafting domestic polish onto a Western skeleton—that, it seems, is Ueda's blend.

Other formative experiences he recounts include the shock of first seeing Virtua Fighter in an arcade ("I thought, video games are really great!", GIGAZINE, 2017), the Amiga-made children's TV show Ugo Ugo Ruga, and Osamu Tezuka's animated Bandar Book (GIGAZINE, 2017). On film he says, "I like movies that are both commercial and critical successes, movies that the average person enjoys seeing. The Dark Knight would be a good example" (ICO 2011 Interview).

Kizuki's reading — not subtraction but delegation

From here is my own reading, as Kizuki. I read the label "the man of subtraction" as only half true. What he really does is not deletion but delegation. He cuts the life gauge, the dialogue, the icon above the head, the explicit story—and into the space left behind he invites the player's imagination and emotion. He makes you keep gripping the girl's hand on the collapsing bridge, turns victory sour with sad music, makes you care about a Trico whose language you cannot understand. For everything cut, something happens inside the player. What Ueda calls "a game defined by what is not there" sounds, to me, like "a game that turns the player's brain into a stage." When he says a foreign game he couldn't understand moved him more because his imagination filled the gaps (CONTINUE, 2005), you see the principle was rooted in his own experience from the start. He is a man who knows how to invert scarcity into richness.

Closing — where to start

If you want to understand Fumito Ueda, I recommend starting with ICO, because his principles rise up there in their plainest form. In the single verb of holding hands lives most of his philosophy. From there, Shadow of the Colossus shows how he handled scale and cruelty as a response to demands for something "more game-like," and The Last Guardian lets you trace how the bond with a partner is elevated into the very subject.

As a related thread, the study of Éric Chahi (Another World), mentioned among his influences, is a trip back up to Ueda's source. On the single point of sparse dialogue and cinematic staging, the two are genuinely connected. Where the "subtraction" of puzzle-adventure came from, and where it went—Fumito Ueda stands somewhere along that single line.

Sources

Primary sources referenced in this article:

・ICO – 2002 Developer Interview / 2011 "Great Scene Sharing" conversation (English translation, shmuplations.com)

・Fumito Ueda – 2005 Developer Interview (English translation of CONTINUE Vol.25, 2005)

・Game Informer: The Last Guardian's Long Journey — An Interview With Fumito Ueda (June 2015)

・GIGAZINE: Interview with Fumito Ueda, "The Last Guardian" Game Director and Designer (January 2017)