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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 7h

Love it, thanks again!

Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 8h

New site: designroom.site
Personal: rooftopshouting.com
Shadow of the Colossus story: bit.ly/sotcoralhistory
Niantic/Punchdrunk story: bit.ly/nianticpunchdrunk
Street Fighter 2 book: bit.ly/likeahurricane
Final Fantasy 7 book: bit.ly/500yearslater
PlayStation 25th video: bit.ly/playstation25th

An illustration shows two characters fighting in a futuristic tournament.

An illustration shows all 16 colossi from Shadow of the Colossus in a single image.

A photograph shows the front cover of the Street Fighter 2 history book Like a Hurricane. It features various directional arrows and circles.

A photograph shows the front cover of the Final Fantasy 7 history book 500 Years Later. The artwork shows people working late in a tall office building.

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Reposted by Matt Leone

Cory Schmitz @coryschmitz.bsky.social · 12h

R-Type poster for #iam8bit20!! @iam8bit.com

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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 10h

Was happy to -- loved seeing it! Thanks.

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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 12h

I'll wrap this up here, but thanks for checking out the story and supporting the new site. It means a lot!

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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 12h

12. While we did most of the interviews for the oral history well in advance, the quotes from composer Kow Otani came in about 24 hours before we published, and thus made for the only part of the story not copy edited by @samitsarkar.bsky.social.

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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 12h

11. Back to the Design Room story, one photo we didn't end up including was this shot of Ueda and producer Kenji Kaido showing Ico to European media outlets, provided by Imogen Baker Othman who helped organize that trip.

Fumito Ueda and Kenji Kaido stand near a blue screen to show their game Ico to European media outlets.

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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 12h

10. We also asked people around the games industry to sketch Team Ico characters for that issue, like this one from former Ready at Dawn concept artist Steven Wen.

A sketch shows Ico and Yorda holding hands while looking out at the sea in front of them.

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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 12h

9. I also got Minority Media, the team behind Papo & Yo (which was heavily inspired by Team Ico's work), to illustrate a flipbook that we ran throughout that 1UP Presents issue.

Papo & Yo 1UP flipbook

YouTube video by Meta4 Interactive

www.youtube.com

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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 12h

8. As a nod to that 1UP Presents story, I used one of the same screenshots in the Design Room Shadow of the Colossus oral history.

A screen capture from Design Room's Shadow of the Colossus oral history, showing various screenshots from the game.

A screen capture from 1UP Presents issue number 3, showing a screenshot from Shadow of the Colossus.

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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 12h

Back in 2011, I profiled Ueda for 1UP's short-lived print-on-demand magazine, 1UP Presents, where he compared game development to hip hop and talked about listening to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack when making Shadow of the Colossus.

The cover for 1UP Presents issue number three, with a Fumito Ueda sketch of Trico from The Last Guardian on the front.

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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 13h

6. Oga actually worked at Sony Computer Entertainment Japan while Shadow of the Colossus was in development... but on another floor, working on Forbidden Siren 2.

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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 13h

5. I previously worked with Takeshi Oga, the illustrator who did our Shadow cover art, on an illustration for the "Life in Japan" package we did at Polygon in 2015.

An illustration shows two girls playing games in the foreground while orange and brown smoke fills the background.

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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 13h

4. If you're wondering whether Design Room's background color was chosen to match Shadow of the Colossus' color palette... well, it's not not the reason.

A screen capture shows the Design Room homepage, with three Shadow of the Colossus stories featured prominently.

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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 13h

3. Early on for the oral history, I was planning a section on the game’s ending. I didn’t end up getting enough people to speak to it to make it work, but here’s a nice quote from Ueda on endings.

A screen capture shows a quote from Fumito Ueda talking about the endings of his games, with Ueda wondering what it says about a game designer if players focus on an ending rather than a game's core gameplay.

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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 13h

2. I remember we were all concerned about the game’s framerate at that point, which wasn’t unusual when you got games months early back then. (In some cases print magazines used to get games like that for review because of lead times, and often didn’t know how to handle them.)

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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 13h

1. I’ve now been doing this long enough that I’m doing retrospectives on games I covered the first time around. So in this photo from the story, you can spot preview code Sony sent us when I worked at 1UP, which is conveniently dated 7/25/05 — a few months before the game shipped.

A photograph shows old preview code of Shadow of the Colossus, a copy of Edge magazine with the game on its cover, and two old promotional DVDs for the game.

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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 13h

Yesterday we posted a big Shadow of the Colossus oral history. Threading a few bits of trivia about that story below...

Shadow of the Colossus: An oral history

Celebrate the 20th anniversary of Team Ico’s masterpiece by looking back with 11 people who worked on it (and three who didn’t).

www.designroom.site

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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 1d

Thanks so much!

Reposted by Matt Leone

Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 1d

Getting off work? Finally have time to read a 10,000-word story? Or perhaps you live overseas... 👀

Design Room @designroom.bsky.social · 1d

For the Shadow of the Colossus story, we interviewed 14 people including project leads Fumito Ueda and Kenji Kaido, hired Gravity Rush concept artist Takeshi Oga to illustrate the cover, and put together a 10,000-word story with help from @milkman.bsky.social @shmuplations.bsky.social and others.

Shadow of the Colossus: An oral history

Celebrate the 20th anniversary of Team Ico’s masterpiece by looking back with 11 people who worked on it (and three who didn’t).

www.designroom.site

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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 1d

Getting off work? Finally have time to read a 10,000-word story? Or perhaps you live overseas... 👀

Design Room @designroom.bsky.social · 1d

For the Shadow of the Colossus story, we interviewed 14 people including project leads Fumito Ueda and Kenji Kaido, hired Gravity Rush concept artist Takeshi Oga to illustrate the cover, and put together a 10,000-word story with help from @milkman.bsky.social @shmuplations.bsky.social and others.

Shadow of the Colossus: An oral history

Celebrate the 20th anniversary of Team Ico’s masterpiece by looking back with 11 people who worked on it (and three who didn’t).

www.designroom.site

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Matt Leone @mattleone.bsky.social · 1d

For the evening crowd... I launched a new oral histories site today. It's very good.

Design Room @designroom.bsky.social · 1d

🚨🚨🚨

We are live! Welcome to Design Room, a new independent games media site.

• We specialize in oral histories like the Final Fantasy 7 and Street Fighter 2 ones I (@mattleone.bsky.social) did at Polygon
• Our first big story is on Shadow of the Colossus: bit.ly/4hjwz8n
• See more: designroom.site

Design Room

Video game oral histories

designroom.site

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Reposted by Matt Leone

Design Room @designroom.bsky.social · 1d

🚨🚨🚨

We are live! Welcome to Design Room, a new independent games media site.

• We specialize in oral histories like the Final Fantasy 7 and Street Fighter 2 ones I (@mattleone.bsky.social) did at Polygon
• Our first big story is on Shadow of the Colossus: bit.ly/4hjwz8n
• See more: designroom.site

Design Room

Video game oral histories

designroom.site

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Reposted by Matt Leone

Design Room @designroom.bsky.social · 1d

And third: A look behind the scenes at how we worked with Gravity Rush concept artist Takeshi Oga on the cover art for our Shadow of the Colossus story.

The making of our Shadow of the Colossus cover art

We hired Gravity Rush concept artist Takeshi Oga to illustrate the cover art for our Shadow of the Colossus oral history, then we talked to him about the process.

www.designroom.site

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Reposted by Matt Leone

Design Room @designroom.bsky.social · 1d

Second: We talked to six former Sony employees about The Last Guardian’s decade in development, and how one of them didn’t like moving it from PS3 to PS4.

Shawn Layden and others on The Last Guardian's 10+-year dev cycle

We talk to six former Sony employees about the long development cycle, the technical challenges, and the move from PlayStation 3 to PlayStation 4.

www.designroom.site

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