The 2006 RES 10: Keita Takahashi

Words: Joshua Ostroff

Photo: Maris Mezulis

If the rainbow-soaked surrealism, nonsensical storylines and ultra-simple gameplay of Katamari Damacy and its sequels seem more like art school projects than videogames, it might be because creator Keita Takahashi is himself a former sculpture student. Before he began working with ones and zeros at Namco in 1999, Takahashi attended art college, where he found himself questioning the value of his own creations.

"Architecture and industrial design are important for everyday life, but how about sculptures?" he asks. "I kept on thinking about how I could create something that would inspire good feelings or thoughts for everyone. I decided not to create art that people merely look at, but rather something that could be used in daily life and make people happy." Takahashi's new aesthetic soon resulted in a ping-pong table that transforms into a robot, a tissue box shaped like a hippo, and a flower pot shaped like a goat. "I never thought that I wanted to be an artist," admits Takahashi. "I just wanted to work at a company or in an industry that makes fun things. That's when I found videogames."

But he became disillusioned again when he discovered that every game in development revolved around racing, fighting, role-playing or shooting. After two years of doing almost no visual design work, Takahashi finally decided to create his own game, Katamari Damacy, which involved rolling an ever-expanding sticky ball over objects ranging from paperclips and Pocky snacks to palm trees and policemen. His follow-up, We Love Katamari, concludes by rolling up the sun. "Just like the things I created in college, I believed that I could make something exciting simply by viewing the things around us in a different way, without relying on magic or monsters," he explains.

But despite his success, the Tokyo-based artist remains an industry iconoclast, freely confessing that he rarely plays videogames and criticizing his contemporaries for focusing on realism rather than creating wholly new experiences unique to the game world. Though he's planning a new game "even more ridiculous than Katamari, Takahashi likely won't stay in the business forever, possibly moving on to playground design. "I realized while making videogames that walking around in a large space with my own legs, touching objects with my own hands, and feeling something with my own body are sensations that are much more fantastic than moving a controller while sitting in one place," he says. "Videogames are fine, but they seem a bit like a roundabout way of having fun. I also think it's kind of a drag that they require electricity to play."