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Keita Takahashi

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Keita Takahashi
Takahashi in 2005
Born1975 (age 49–50)
Moji-ku, Kitakyūshū, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan
Alma materMusashino Art University
Occupation(s)Game designer, artist
SpouseAsuka Sakai
Children2[1]

Keita Takahashi (高橋 慶太, Takahashi Keita, born 1975) is a Japanese game developer and artist. He is best known for creating the Katamari game franchise and working as director and lead designer on Katamari Damacy as well as its sequel, We Love Katamari. The original game was a surprise hit and soon garnered a cult following. After leaving Namco, Takahashi co-founded the indie game studio Uvula in 2010 with his wife Asuka Sakai.

Career

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Takahashi entered the Musashino Art University to study sculpting in 1995.[2] After graduating he had lost interest in sculpting as a full-time career and pivoted to video games instead. He joined Namco around 1999 and started working on multiple smaller projects as an artist for the video game publisher.[2]

While working at Namco, Takahashi was thinking of original game ideas, but unable to pitch them due to him being in the art department. He eventually joined the Namco Digital Hollywood Game Laboratory, a game design academy run by Namco.[3] He recruited nearly a dozen of its students alongside a few programmers and visual designers from elsewhere inside the company.[1] The prototype of Katamari took six months to develop and led to Namco green lighting the game's full development.[3] After one and a half years of development Katamari Damacy released on March 18, 2004, for the Playstation 2. The game was a surprise hit and quickly developed a cult following over the years. Katamari Damacy Reroll, a high-definition remastered version of the game, was released in December 2018. In a 2023 interview Takahashi said he isn't receiving any royalties from the sales of Katamari games.[1]

The popularity of Katamari came as a surprise to Takahashi as well as his employer. He strongly opposed the idea of a sequel. After he found out that development on a continuation of Katamari was already underway, Namco informed him they would develop a sequel with or without him.[4] Takahashi decided to take part in the development process once again so "players [wouldn't] be dissappointed".[5] We Love Katamari released on June 7, 2005.[6] The game is self-referential about being a game as well as a sequel.[7]

Takahashi at the 2006 Game Developers Conference

On February 19, 2009 Noby Noby Boy was released.[8] The game was published by Bandai Namco and designed by Takahashi. In Noby Noby Boy players were able to collect points and help a separate character travel through the solar system. The game's goal was shared by all players and was cumulatively reached after more than six years.[9][10]

In a 2005 interview, just after the release of We Love Katamari, Takahashi announced that he hopes to eventually move on from video games, with an ambition of designing playgrounds for children. He believes children should spend less time in the virtual world and more time in the physical world.[5] In October 2009, the Nottingham City Council announced during the Gamecity festival that Takahashi was spending a month in the city working on designs for the play area at Woodthorpe Grange.[11] A year later he announced that he quit Namco, citing creative differences and the changes since the company merged with Japanese toy manufacturer Bandai as reasons for his departure.[12][13] He and his wife, Asuka Sakai, formed the company Uvula around the same time in October 2010.[14] Shortly after that Takahashi and Sakai moved to Vancouver, Canada.[13][10] In 2012, Takahashi announced that Nottingham project had been indefinitely postponed due to budget concerns.[15]

Takahashi moved to Canada after getting a job offer from Tiny Speck to work on Glitch, a 2D browser game. The project launched in September 2011 and shut down a year later in December 2012. The messaging tools inside Glitch were eventually used as the basis for the corporate communication platform Slack.[13][16]

In December 2012, Takahashi moved to San Francisco in the United States and started work on his next game Wattam.[13] The game was developed by Funomena, an "experimental game design company" co-founded by Robin Hunicke who has also previously worked on Glitch.[10][17] In early 2019, the Telfair Museum ran an exhibition at the Jepson Center for the Arts entitled "Keita Takahashi: Zooming Out", featuring various elements of Takahashi's work. Takahashi worked on designing the exhibits, which included a playable version of his 2013 game Alphabet with a custom controller.[18][19]

After working on it since at least 2015, a new game by Takahashi and fellow Uvula developer Ryan Mohler was released for and alongside the Playdate game console developed by Panic and designed in collaboration with Teenage Engineering in April 2022.[20] According to Game Developer Crankin's Time Travel Adventure became "something of a poster child" of the Playdate. The game uses the handheld console's mechanical crank to manipulate time.[20]

In July 2022, Uvula and publisher Annapurna Interactive announced a new game project by Takahashi, called "To a T". The game is described as a "narrative adventure game" following the daily life of a teenager in a small coastal town.[21][22]

Video games

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Year Game Role Publisher
2004 Katamari Damacy Director Namco
2005 We Love Katamari Director Namco
2009 Noby Noby Boy Director, designer Namco Bandai Games
2011 Glitch Designer Tiny Speck
2013 Tenya Wanya Teens[10] Designer Uvula
Alphabet Designer LA Game Space
2016 Woorld Designer Funomena
2019 Wattam Designer Annapurna Interactive
2021 Crankin's Time Travel Adventure Designer Panic Inc.
TBA To a T[22] Designer Annapurna Interactive

References

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  1. ^ a b c Small, Zachary (July 28, 2023). "He Created the Katamari Games, but They're Rolling On Without Him". The New York Times. Retrieved January 27, 2025.
  2. ^ a b Hall, L.E. (2018). "Keita's Mixed Media". Katamari Damacy. Boss Fight Books. ISBN 978-1-940535-17-3.
  3. ^ a b Hall, L.E. (2018). "Katamari Takes Shape". Katamari Damacy. Boss Fight Books. ISBN 978-1-940535-17-3.
  4. ^ Agnello, Anthony John (September 14, 2018). "Opinion: It's Time for More Katamari". The Escapist. Retrieved January 27, 2025.
  5. ^ a b Hermida, Alfred (November 10, 2005). "Technology | Katamari creator dreams of playgrounds". BBC News. Retrieved January 27, 2025.
  6. ^ "Now Playing in Japan". IGN. July 12, 2005. Retrieved January 27, 2025.
  7. ^ Leone, Matt. "Thinking outside of the box". 1UP. Archived from the original on January 15, 2010. Retrieved January 27, 2025.
  8. ^ Purchese, Rob (January 22, 2009). "Noby Noby Boy to get February release". Eurogamer. Gamer Network. Archived from the original on September 21, 2023. Retrieved August 20, 2024.
  9. ^ Sinclair, Brendan (July 5, 2018). "The negativity of Keita Takahashi". GamesIndustry.biz. Gamer Network. Retrieved January 30, 2025.
  10. ^ a b c d McCarthy, Caty (September 21, 2018). "Keita Takahashi on Wattam and the Superfluousness of Video Games". VG247. Gamer Network. Archived from the original on January 30, 2025. Retrieved January 30, 2025.
  11. ^ "Video games guru to design play area". Nottingham Post. Archived from the original on November 20, 2009. Retrieved January 27, 2025.
  12. ^ Yin-Poole, Wesley (November 1, 2010). "Keita Takahashi: Why I left Namco". Eurogamer. Retrieved January 27, 2025.
  13. ^ a b c d Ashcraft, Brian (June 19, 2019). "Why Katamari Damacy's Creator Left Japan". Kotaku. Retrieved January 27, 2025.
  14. ^ Gilbert, Ben (October 3, 2010). "Katamari Damacy director and wife reveal new company". Engadget. Retrieved January 27, 2025.
  15. ^ Beard, Marcus (September 5, 2012). "Staying Playful with Keita Takahashi". Retrieved January 27, 2024.
  16. ^ Honan, Mat (August 7, 2014). "How Stewart Butterfield Created Slack From a Failed Video Game". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved January 29, 2025.
  17. ^ "The Woman Who Gave You Journey Returns With a VR Fairy Tale". WIRED. Archived from the original on August 23, 2017. Retrieved August 23, 2017.
  18. ^ "Keita Takahashi: Zooming Out » Telfair Museums".
  19. ^ "Tracing the work of Keita Takahashi, from Sculpture to Games". Telfair Museums. Retrieved January 27, 2025.
  20. ^ a b "(Literally) spinning a yarn in time-bending puzzler Crankin's Time Travel Adventure". Game Developer. April 19, 2022. Retrieved January 28, 2025.
  21. ^ Pineda, Rafael Antonio (July 30, 2022). "Katamari Damacy Creator Keita Takahashi Teases New Game". Anime News Network. Retrieved January 27, 2025.
  22. ^ a b Romano, Sal (June 29, 2023). "Annapurna Interactive, uvula, and Keita Takahashi announce to a T for Xbox Series, Xbox One, and PC". Gematsu. Retrieved January 27, 2025.
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