DEVELOPMENT:

It has been said that when Keita Takahashi, the game director for Katamari Damacy, joined Namco, he wasn’t familiar with computers and didn’t even own a PlayStation.

Mr. Takahashi claims that the concept for Katamari Damacy grew out of his senior thesis project for a Namco-sponsored university. Namco and Digital Hollywood (a digital arts school) collaborated to form Namco Digital Hollywood Game Laboratory, a sponsored institute for game development education similar to Nintendo’s sponsored DigiPen.  Takahashi's final thesis created the core gameplay ideas, while a team of ten other designers developed the final product resulting in a prototype of Katamari being made as an exercise. Namco handled the game design, programming and art direction while the students made all the in-game objects that the players roll up. The purpose of the project was for the students to learn the overall flow of the game creation process.

Takahashi has described the idea of Katamari “just came to [him].”  He felt that current games were suffering from lack of originality, which drove him to create a game that was in-of-itself unique.  Takahashi said that the team was aiming for four key points in developing the game: novelty, ease of understanding, enjoyment, and humor.  One of the main parts of the concept was to make the game play something easy and friendly.  He has described his frustration with the fact that “games these days are all so complicated” and the fact that he was “just tired of all those complications.”  He wanted to create a gameplay experience where the player is more concerned about what is on the screen than what distinct actions their fingers are taking and at one point during the development, Takahashi "proactively ignored" advice from Namco to increase the complexity of the game.

The game was developed for less than $1 million dollars (US), a tenth of the cost of other Namco blockbuster titles.  The game took a year and a half to develop, with eight months of prototyping.
In the end, Katamari Damacy was a third-person puzzle-action video game that was published and developed by Namco for the PlayStation 2 video game console. It was first revealed at the 2003 Tokyo Game Show, at which the press dubbed it a "snowball simulator". The image featured on the cover of the pre-release demo showed a "Tamakorogashi", a large ball used in "undoukai", a game played by Japanese schoolchildren that was an influence for the game.  Plans for releasing the game in Western countries were tied to its performance in Japan.  Katamari Damacy was first shown in the United States at the Experimental Gameplay Workshop during the March 2004 Game Developers Conference. Due to its popularity at trade shows and a write-in campaign, Namco decided to release the game in the United States.  Katamari Damacy was released in Japan at about two-thirds of the cost of a new title, while the cost was less than half the cost of a new game for its United States release.

Overall, Katamari Damacy was well received in Japan and North America. The game was dubbed a “sleeper hit”, and won several awards, including the “Good Design Award” from the Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization (a first ever for a video game).
Katamari Damacy inspired the development of other video games, and led to the release of five sequels in Japan and other territories: We Love Katamari, Me & My Katamari, Beautiful Katamari, I Love Katamari and Katamari Forever.

Publisher: Namco
Platforms: PlayStation 2
Full-Time Staff: 25
Development Time: 1.5 years
Released: September 21, 2004 (US)
Tools Used: 3D Studio Max, Photoshop, Illustrator, Optpix
CONTROLLERS BROKEN WHILE MAKING THE GAME: 13