At GDC 2009, Keita Takahashi – the man behind virtual LSD trips Katamari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy denied he’d ever used drugs. That’s right, folks – his special kind of insanity is completely natural.
If you’ve ever played the wonderfully strange roll-em-up Katamari Damacy – let alone the completely bizarre Noby Noby Boy – you’re probably aware that the mind of Keita Takahashi is a strange and wonderful place.
While the prevalence of mushrooms and strange multi-frond plants in the Katamari Damacy opening might lead some to believe that Takahashi’s creativity is fueled by some, *ahem* less-than-legal substances, the man took the opportunity at GDC 2009 to disabuse any notions of drug use: “I don’t use drugs at all. I don’t drink,” said Takahashi, according to Kotaku. “Please, don’t worry about me.” Apparently, he’s that crazy all on his own.
Beyond refuting any allegations of drug use, though, Takahashi’s talk revealed that while the man might indeed be totally nuts, he’s … also sort of brilliant, in a way. The two often go hand-in-hand, to be fair. Some of the man’s quotes as reported by Kotaku are just … well, I really have no words.
On Noby Noby Boy’s design: “I wanted to show an ironic point of view about our consumption-based society. But I wanted to make more objects. If [the game] were empty, I would feel empty or lonely. When I made Katamari Damacy and objects were rolled up into a ball, they were gone. I felt empty. I feel this way about our disposable society.”
On unforeseen Noby Noby Boy development: “I wanted to create a game where even the developers couldn’t see what was coming. Of course I wasn’t thinking about debugging at this point. The people who did the debugging asked me what was a bug. I couldn’t answer that.”
On users versus players: “Hiyao Miyazaki, the film director, says that children today are not playing, they’re consumers. I think that’s true. In Japan, people who play games are called ‘users.’ I think games should be played. Perhaps it’s minute, but that bothered me. We just throw around the term users and that bothers me.”
On workplace violence: “People who come to the company call them users and that makes me so mad I want to bonk them! Sometimes I think they should die.”
On sales: “Maybe I should make sure that Noby Noby Boy should only be available on PlayStation 3 and only available by download. That way, maybe it won’t sell that much. It’s only been available for a month or so, but I was right! It’s not selling that much. That’s probably not a good thing.”
Honestly, I’m kind of flabbergasted. I also kind of want to buy that guy a drink – even if he wouldn’t accept it. Those are some of my favorite quotes, but they aren’t the only ones – check out the rest over at Kotaku, if you’re interested.
What can I say? The dude’s a genius. A completely insane genius, but a genius nonetheless.
