{"id":55701,"date":"2018-10-17T19:58:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-17T19:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/328861"},"modified":"2018-10-17T19:58:00","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T19:58:00","slug":"the-uphill-battle-of-getting-katamari-damacy-noticed-by-namco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/10\/17\/the-uphill-battle-of-getting-katamari-damacy-noticed-by-namco\/","title":{"rendered":"The uphill battle of getting Katamari Damacy noticed by Namco"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cBut I felt that it was so much better than joining boring other projects, so I decided to join this project as game designer.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

– Katamari Damacy’s creator Keita Takahashi on taking a professional risk to pursue creatively fulfilling work.<\/em><\/p>\n

Japanese business culture runs deep within the Japanese games industry, where the hierarchal structure\u00a0is deeply rooted in tradition.\u00a0It was\u00a0safe and generally expected for employees to stick to\u00a0the norm– and that applied when it came to pitching video games.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In an excerpt published to Polygon<\/a> from the upcoming book Katamari\u00a0Damacy, author L.E. Hall (and accomplished escape room designer)\u00a0spoke with\u00a0Katamari\u00a0Damacy’s\u00a0<\/em>creator Keita Takahashi to discuss the uphill battle of getting the higher-ups of Namco\u00a0to accept his game idea.<\/p>\n

Takahashi’s desire to create a new type\u00a0of game was hindered by the fact that at the time, Namco had no real internal process for pitching a game design from\u00a0his position or the department he was in. It was an internal roadblock with no clear solution in sight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unsure of where to start, Takahashi spoke with his boss Mitsutoshi\u00a0Ozaki\u00a0on how to move the idea forward into actual internal production.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cUsually game ideas were proposed from the game design department at Namco, but we both worked in the art department,” Takahashi explained.<\/p>\n

“Also, technically Ozaki-san was not my actual boss at that time. He had moved to another department, so I had to talk to my current boss about my idea first\u2014but he was not a manager of game designers, he was a manager of artists. He seemed to not have a bad impression of my idea, but he couldn\u2019t make a decision about the game itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the setback, Takahashi remained resilient in getting his pitch to stick.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt sucked, and I was stuck, but Ozaki-san had suggested a very unusual method for moving forward to me,” Takahashi said.<\/p>\n

“At that time, I think he worked in the \u2018new business department\u2019 where they explore new business models. And that department was going to establish a specialized school for making video games for Namco by collaborating with a school for learning computer graphics called Digital Hollywood.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Namco Digital Hollywood Game Lab was a six-month course aimed\u00a0at\u00a0helping developers learn the necessary skills to create\u00a0games for the PlayStation 2, with the goal being\u00a0that their program would spit out different and interesting work while turning\u00a0graduates into new hires.<\/p>\n

\u201cOzaki-san said that Masaya Nakamura, then president of Namco, was interested in being a school principal, and that is one of the big reasons for this business,\u201d Takahashi noted.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd this game class had a curriculum where they actually make a game. But the students of this school [were] learn[ing] to be CG artists. So Ozaki-san needed a game idea that was easy to collaborate on with very junior artists, and my idea was selected. Ozaki-san thought the students could make objects that a katamari can roll up.”<\/p>\n

Thus began work on the\u00a0Katamari\u00a0Damacy<\/em>\u00a0prototype.<\/p>\n

The entire excerpt is well worth the read and offers more detail into the prototyping stage of\u00a0Katamari\u00a0Damacy’s\u00a0<\/em>development,\u00a0so be sure to check it out over at Polygon<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cBut I felt that it was so much better than joining boring other projects, so I decided to join this project as game designer.\u201d – Katamari Damacy’s creator Keita Takahashi on taking a professional risk to pursue creatively fulfilling work. Japanese business culture runs deep within the Japanese games industry, where the hierarchal structure\u00a0is deeply […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}