On the small scale, 'Ico,' I think, actually delivered a small new thing: holding a character's hand and really feeling like your job is to rescue this person, and establishing a personal connection.

I think there's always room for more innovation and new things.

Gamers both demand and deserve novelty. They need something new. As a game developer, one of my rules is there will be at least one thing in every game that I worked on that no one on the planet has seen before.

I gotta do what I think is right, and if enough people like it, I'm a winner. And if they don't, I'll open a bookstore.

I think plenty of games - from 'Thief' to 'Zelda' - have shown that sneaking around can be fun.

For me, the cool thing is doing things that could only be done in gaming.