Katamari Damacy by L.E Hall, a Boss Fight Books Review
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Katamari Damacy is a fantastic game. It’s crazy and surreal and tons of fun. This book, by L.E Hall, is part of the Boss Fight Books series and tells the story of Katamari Damacy’s creation.
I read Katamari Damacy by L.E Hall. And I’ve got some thoughts.
[Intro]Welcome to Burning Books. I’m Caleb, and I want to help you love video games even more. Today I’m doing that by continuing my journey to read and review all of the Boss Fight Books releases. I’ve reviewed 11 so far, check the link in the description for a playlist and be sure to subscribe to stay updated as new reviews are uploaded.
Boss Fight Books come in two flavors with degrees of overlap between them. The biography style and the memoir style. The biography styling being less personal and more objective.
This book is a straightforward telling of Katamari Damacy’s creation and lineage, and in being so it falls neatly into the biography style with almost no personal stories to compliment the timeline. It works here, and the book is very enjoyable, but given the author’s experience in interactive game design, I would have loved for that experience—and the resulting opinions and insights—to dovetail with the history a bit more.
But that’s my only criticism. The book does it’s job as a map of the game’s creation very well. It relies heavily on interviews with and talks by the game’s creator Keita Takahashi, and his story is a fascinating one. His is an atypical origin story, coming not from the world of game design but instead from the world of physical sculpture. However, he never seemed to pay much mind to the high-Art baggage that so often comes along with being a physical artist. Hall writes that at GDC, the Game Developers Conference, in 2005 Takahshi reflected on the formal fine arts scene, and how those types of creators are typically perceived by society.
People who are artists and writers are certainly admired, but I always wondered if they really are contributing anything to society…I was young and perhaps I was too pure. But I couldn’t see how sculpture can tie into our lives. (pg 17)
Takahashi wasn’t interested in art for art’s sake. He wanted to be seen as a designer rather than an artist. This lead to a somewhat difficult road into the videogame industry. After landing a job at Namco, he had trouble integrating into a development team where his creativity was welcomed. Ultimately he did find his place and eventually out came Katamari Damacy, an incredibly strange and surreal game where the player character grows the size of a sphere by rolling over and absorbing everyday objects like dominos, fence posts, trees, and eventually entire buildings.
Perhaps most interesting of all about this book, perhaps only to me personally, I understand, is where the book touches on Katamari Damacy’s inclusion in the Architecture and Design department of the Museum of Modern Art, and in doing so mentions the considerations that must be made when deciding how museum-goers experience an exhibited game (of 110). This made me question the legitimacy of a video game museum, which is hard for me to do considering I’ve twice visited, and loved visiting, the National Videogame Museum in Frisco, Texas. But if what’s being exhibited is an experience, how can that experience truly be conveyed? Do you need a museum tour guide to speak about the game’s story and mechanics? Given that games require interactivity, does any representation that’s not interactive discount the narrative a museum is meant to document? If so, would this very book be a support or a hindrance if accompanying a playable version of the game in a museum. Ultimately, I do feel games should be respected, and if the trappings of a museum are a way to encourage respect then sure, build a million video game museums. But I will argue that a museum isn’t an ideal environment to experience a game.
L.E Hall’s book is a really great documentation of Katamari Damacy. Fans of the game or fans of the game’s creator should absolutely buy the book from Boss Fight Books and read it.
What are your thoughts on video game museums? And, have you read this book or any other Boss Fight Books? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
Mentioned
Music Credits
8bit Dungeon Level Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
