Keita Takahashi is one of a kind. First making his mark on the video game world with Katamari Damacy, he’s been a sporadic but welcome presence in the industry ever since, creating Noby Noby Boy in 2009 and working on various projects – such as the ambitious, sadly cancelled MMO Glitch and the show-floor favourite Tenya Wanya Teens – since. Over the next 12 months we’re due not just one but two Takahashi games, first with Wattam for PC and PS4 and, early next year, with his contribution to the recently announced handheld PlayDate. We took the chance to sit down with him at BitSummit last week to talk about… Well, various things.
Let’s start with Wattam, I guess. What’s taken so long! It’s been in development for so long now.
Keita Takahashi: Yeah, it’s been five or six years. You can play the demo now though! Why? There are many reasons, but the biggest reason is we got cancelled by Sony. But we still believed it’d be a good game, so at the time one of the ex-Santa Monica Studio guys, he told me they were looking for a new partner, a new publisher – which is Annapurna – so I was waiting on that. While I was waiting, I was able to make different games, like the Google AR project, currently the Panic Playdate thing. And then, finally we got investment from Annapurna Interactive, we had to find new team members, update the game engine. That’s why it’s taken so long.
Why did Sony cancel it – do you know their reasons?
Keita Takahashi: I don’t know – actually, I don’t care! [Laughs].
Maybe they didn’t understand what Wattam is. It’s hard to describe – even I can’t really do it.
So… Now I’m going to ask you how you’d describe it.
Keita Takahashi: If I could describe it in language, why do I have to make a video game, right? [Laughs]
On a base level, then, what are you trying to express?
Keita Takahashi: I lived in Vancouver before I moved to San Francisco. When I was living in Vancouver, I got the very basic idea for Wattam. Before I moved to Vancouver, I was living in Tokyo. In Tokyo there’s some diversity, but more people are Japanese, talk Japanese – people are the same. I know that’s extreme talk! But in Vancouver, there are so many different races of people – Chinese, African, European, Canadian – they talk English to work together, even though they have their own mother language. We still have some dumb issues in our world, there are so many fights, so much friction, that’s also made with the differences – different regions, companies, countries and so on. But I’d say if all people, the same kind of people, the same kind of culture, that’s going to be super boring.
Yeah, I live in south London and it’s why I love it and never want to leave.
Keita Takahashi: Human beings are so different, and they’re living on the same planet. I just wanted to make a video game where so many different people work together to get over the differences, make something new, it’s such fun. That’s the original idea of Wattam.
You just described it really well!
Keita Takahashi: That’s just the concept! That’s not describing the game.
Yeah, but the concept’s the important bit. Everything else is just detail.
Keita Takahashi: Okay! So that’s Wattam!
How much has it changed over the years?
Keita Takahashi: There’s not so much change, but we had to cut some fundamental things. They’re kind of small things, but for me that’s really big. Have you played it yet?
I haven’t – I know it’s on the showfloor, and I know I shouldn’t be like this in my line of work, but if it’s something I want to play I want to wait until the final thing is in my hands.