Katamari Creator Interview

Keita Takahashi, the creator of Katamari Damacy was recently interviewed on BBC News and had the following to say about the games industry:

"Developers want to come up with fun games but ideas are judged by their sales potential. The reality is that decisions are driven by sales and marketing."

This is most certainly true. In my occupation, I've seen some great ideas be shot down by marketing and business people who don't really know games. There are definitely companies that do have people who know games run it, but many times, a good game has been torpedoed by the marketing division as being "low sales potential" or "unsellable". The role of marketing should not be telling the developer what to make or not make. The role of marketing and the business end of things should be to sell what the developer creates.

Marketing should not be in a position to dictate what the designers make, yet this is currently the model behind most game publishers. Marketing's job is to sell the product. Publishers should be able to say to their marketing people -- if you can't sell my game, then I will find marketing people who can. But this whole process of "picking games to market" has to stop. It's creating a games industry of copycat games, and the only loser here is the customer.

In fact, he says he feels slightly ashamed that much of the talk about the new machines is about more realistic looking games, rather than about using the raw power to do different things in a game.

"There are people who don't buy games at the moment but want to have fun," he said. "They want more choices and more selection."

I feel exactly as Takahashi does about the future of game consoles. The focus is on technology and realism and not on the gameplay. Gameplay exists independently of the technology, and with few exceptions, doesn't change from console to console. But in order to sell new consoles, the focus becomes "how can we create a game that shows off the cool features such that we can get gamers to move off of old console and onto new console?", instead of "is it possible that the new technology enables us to do things we previously couldn't on a console?"

While I was at Blizzard, I thought Blizzard would be my swan song in this industry. It wasn't, as my sitting here at Castaway proves that. But now, I'm thinking past Castaway and thinking that this isn't the end of the game road for me either. Maybe all the industry needs a few more people like me and Keita Takahashi to save it.