In 2005 Keita Takahashi stood in front of a Game Developers Conference Europe audience in a London ballroom and pitched his next idea: a wifi-enabled, AI-enhanced, heated toy cat that could coax housebound grandmothers into a competitive soup-making game. He meowed to show how the cat would work, and his translator meowed after him. Edge, reporting the scene, overheard one developer muttering that he did not deserve the attention. Most of the room disagreed. A few years earlier Takahashi had been a Namco artist with no finished game to his name. Then came Katamari Damacy, and by 2005, Edge wrote, there seemed to be “only two games on the western developer playlist: World Of WarCraft and Katamari Damacy”.
Fast facts
- Born: 1975, in Kitakyūshū, Japan.
- Training: sculpture.
- Namco: 1999 to 2010.
- Games: Katamari Damacy (2004) and We Love Katamari (2005) for the PlayStation 2; Noby Noby Boy (2009) for the PlayStation 3 and iPhone; Tenya Wanya Teens (shown in 2013); Wattam (2019); To a T (2025).
- Studio: Uvula, his own, after Namco.
A sculptor at Namco
Takahashi studied sculpture, and told the 2005 Game Developers Conference that he joined Namco because “the videogame industry sold pleasure”. He joined, he later said, “for a balance between what’s required and what I want to do”. Two years in he had still not worked on a game that reached the shops: “it did not look good that I hadn’t participated in a game which had been completed. It was a personal crisis.” He told Electronic Gaming Monthly how the way out began: “At that time, there were no projects at Namco that I was interested in. Then my boss said to me, ‘Why don’t you just develop your own game?’” The idea he came back with was a ball that rolls up everything smaller than itself. “There’s no particular reason or catalyst for me thinking it up,” he said; “it’s just something that I came up with all of a sudden.”
He picked his team from people he felt were under-used. “I chose the best people there — people who I could see weren’t doing their best work on other projects,” he told Edge. His working rule was simple: “If something isn’t fun to make, why would it be fun to play?”
Katamari Damacy
Katamari Damacy came out in Japan in March 2004. A fortnight later Takahashi showed it at the Game Developers Conference’s experimental gameplay workshop in America, word spread among developers, and Namco, which had not expected the reception, arranged an American release. At the 2005 conference his talk earned a standing ovation. Edge called the game “a blueprint for everything many people wish the videogame industry was doing and fear it never will again”.
Takahashi used his platform to scold his audience. He told Edge in 2006: “I find it very frustrating more developers aren’t making more creative games. I can’t understand it. One of the reasons I made Katamari was to say to people: ‘Look, you can do this too!’ But they don’t.” He did not want a sequel. “I wasn’t interested in making a sequel, as the industry is often filled with useless sequels,” he told Hardcore Gamer, “but I was asked to make one, so I did. I wanted to make it even more goofy than the first.” We Love Katamari came out in Japan in July 2005. The series carried on without him after that.
Noby Noby Boy and a playground
At the GameCity festival in Nottingham in October 2007 Takahashi showed his next game running for the first time, on a PlayStation 3, and handed controllers to the audience. Noby Noby Boy gave the player a stretchy creature with one end on each analogue stick; pulling them apart stretched it out. Edge thought it looked more like “a pure virtual toy” than a game. Takahashi explained that as well as “stretch” and “free”, the word noby can mean “postpone”. “My feeling is, there doesn’t need to be any goal,” he said. “It should be flexible, there should be freedom for every player to enjoy it for themselves.” The game came out on the PlayStation Network in 2009, and later on the iPhone.
At the same festival he announced that he would design a playground for the people of Nottingham. GameCity’s director, Iain Simons, had read in an interview that Takahashi dreamed of making one. “Being totally honest with you, I’m beginning to get a bit bored making just games,” Takahashi told Edge. “At the moment, I just want to make a park where a child will feel like taking off his shoes and start to run.” In 2009 Bandai Namco lent him to Nottingham City Council to design it, and he spent several weeks in the city. One of his hopes was a full-sized slide for dogs.
After Namco
Takahashi left Namco Bandai in 2010, after more than a decade, saying he had “only made four games in 11 years”. He set up his own studio, Uvula. In 2013 Edge previewed Tenya Wanya Teens, a party game made with Brandon Boyer in which each player used “a hulking, 16-button arcade stick”. Wattam, developed with Funomena and published by Annapurna Interactive in December 2019, cast the player as a cube-shaped mayor who makes friends by setting off the bomb he keeps under his hat; Wireframe called it “the latest product from the incomparable mind of Keita Takahashi”, and it was nominated for three BAFTA Games Awards. He was also among the first developers signed up for Panic’s handheld Playdate. In May 2025 Uvula and Annapurna released To a T, a story game about a teenager stuck in a T-pose, for PC and consoles.
Sources
- Edge issue 149, May 2005, pp. 59–60: report of Takahashi’s GDC 2005 talk (sculpture; “the videogame industry sold pleasure”; two years at Namco; the standing ovation; “a blueprint”).
- Hardcore Gamer volume 1 issue 4, September 2005: Q&A with Keita Takahashi (We Love Katamari; “useless sequels”).
- Electronic Gaming Monthly issue 198, December 2005: interview with Keita Takahashi (his boss’s suggestion; the idea “all of a sudden”).
- Edge issue 158, January 2006, pp. 50–53: “Everybody Loves Takahashi” (GDC Europe 2005 and the toy cat; the TGS demo and GDC workshop; the developer playlist; “very frustrating”; choosing his team; “If something isn’t fun to make”).
- Edge issue 183, Christmas 2007, pp. 12–14: GameCity 2007 report and “The play’s the thing” (the Nottingham playground; Noby Noby Boy shown on PS3; “noby”; “a balance between what’s required and what I want to do”; “bored making just games”).
- Edge issue 209, Christmas 2009: GameCity 2009 report (Bandai Namco lends Takahashi to Nottingham City Council; the slide for dogs).
- Edge issue 220, November 2010, p. 13: Takahashi leaves Namco Bandai (“four games in 11 years”; Noby Noby Boy on PSN and iPhone; the Nottingham play park).
- Edge issue 253, May 2013: Tenya Wanya Teens preview (Uvula; Brandon Boyer; the 16-button sticks).
- Wireframe issue 15, May 2019: Playdate announcement (Takahashi among its developers). Issue 16, June 2019: Wattam preview. Issue 34, March 2020: Steve McNeil on the BAFTA Games Awards nominations (Wattam). Issue 50, April 2021, pp. 107–108: Ryan Lambie on Wattam.
- Andrew Fisher, “Why We Still Katamari”, Fusion Annual 2026, pp. 48–51: the series after We Love Katamari carried on without Takahashi.
- Wikipedia, “Wattam” (web, secondary): Funomena and Annapurna Interactive; released 17 December 2019 for PlayStation 4 and Windows; BAFTA nominations for Family, Game Design and Music. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wattam
- Ravi Sinha, “Katamari Series Creator’s to a T Launches on May 28th”, GamingBolt, 24 February 2025 (web, secondary): Uvula, Annapurna Interactive, the platforms and premise. https://gamingbolt.com/katamari-series-creators-to-a-t-launches-on-may-28th
- Wikipedia, “Keita Takahashi”, and Japanese Wikipedia, “高橋慶太” (web, secondary): born 1975 in Kitakyūshū; Musashino Art University; joined Namco in 1999; Noby Noby Boy (2009); Uvula. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keita_Takahashi