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Katamari Damacy - A Critique
Beth A. Dillon writes "In this Game Career Guide feature, Katamari Damacy — A Critique: Part One, Ryan Stancl argues for game criticism in part one of a three part series on Katamari Damacy, this week featuring Biographical and New Critical forms of analysis." From the article: "Video games now, more than ever, need to be not just reviewed, but critiqued, because of their negative image in the press, in politics, in the general public, and quite simply because they are so ripe for critiquing. Games aren't just for kids anymore, and it's not because of the sex and violence. Over the next few weeks I will be introducing you to eight schools of criticism - Biographical, New Critical, Marxist, Structural, Jungian, Psychoanalytical, Feminist, and Post-Colonial - giving a little history behind each, and showing how they can be used to critique the video game Katamari Damacy for the PlayStation 2."
I can see the intellectual exercise of critiquing a game according to any number of schools of thought. What I don't get is for whom is such critique necessary?
The gaming audience isn't really interested in anything but a straight review. Your politicians aren't interested in anything beyond general conversation about the negative effects of games.
Maybe your soc or psych professor wants to hear about it, but I doubt there's anything to say that hasn't been said before about games.
I don't mean to be down on this, but it just seems like an utter waste of time and effort. There just doesn't seem to be a payoff here.
"Woo, tangent."
Clearly the King of All Cosmos represents the "man", screwing up royally, and making the Prince (mouse sized) fix his mistakes, by creating a bigger and bigger ball of the proletariat. This clearly glorifies bailing out the powerful, sticking it to the little guy to rectify the mistakes of 'the man'. The message of the game is 'be a good little consumer'. This game should be banned at all costs. It is just the man keeping us down.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
I told you that a liberal arts degree wasn't a waste! Do you know where my McDonalds shirt is?
... is, is it FUN?
If a game doesn't have that, it doesn't matter what philosophical, political, biological, cultural viewpoints it presents.
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Game Design is about the unholy trinity: Abstraction, Logicalness/Consistency, Convenience
Unfortunately, far too mamy players are argueing about the wrong thing, usually the red herring of realism. If you favor realism over abstraction, you have a simulator, not a game.
I disagree with the above posters. I remember when the slashdot community got in a big huff each time Ebert questioned the status of videogames as art. Guess what art does? It gets critiqued. Literature, painting, theater, sculpture all do. Recently(the past few decades) have seen movies and, to a much lesser degree, television have become viable subjects of critique. So why not video games? Not all games are purely entertainment to occupy your time. If they were, the majority of games would be the simply puzzle games like solitaire and their ilk, games that most people it seems on slashdot scoff at as "not real games." Games usually tell a narrative whether obvious or not. Myst wasn't just a set of puzzles disconnected from each other. It was a series of puzzles that both helped unlock parts of a story and were part of the story themselves. Another, perhaps less obvious example, is Contra. You're not just a "thing" with a gun shooting other "things." You're a commando fighting soldiers and aliens. Level progression tells you you're fighting in some overall picture. Even without narrative, you like certain games and not others, and I don't mean quality alone. I've liked some 9/10 games and not others. Why? Because of some aesthetic response that merits examining. When we examine games critically we can better understand, perhaps, the mechanics of enjoying a game. Then hopefully, we put that to use and make more enjoyable games. The article in the end I take as a first step towards this aim, though I don't necessarily like its analysis, though maybe because I've always been more of a historical/marxist/political reader when it came to my undergrad thesis.
Well, think of it this way: if you see Grand Theft Auto: Vice City as a satire, you'll get a real kick out of it. If you see it as an indoctrination into a life of crime, you may be wary that other people are playing it. An in-depth critique of the sort the author seems to want to apply could shed some light on the matter, and perhaps determine the creators' intent, or whether GTA:VC is "a good thing" in terms of the goals of one or another critical community (e.g. Marxists, who might take issue with the game's anarcho-capitalism). I don't know much about Katamari Damacy but I don't see why the same sense of academic study can't apply to it.
Give a hoot, read a book!
While I'm disappointed that I have to wait to read the other two parts of this critique, I'm glad it's being posted at all. This is a game worth in-depth analysis.
One of my favourite aspects of video games is the representation of the real world. Many people are enthusiastic about this aspect of gaming but most don't share my take on the subject. I wouldn't be a Slashdotter if I wasn't wowed by pixel shaders and bump mapping and advanced AI, but what really fascinates me is the artistic representation of reality - the statement made about our world facilitated by creative use of limited resources.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is one of the greatest contenders in this field as its depiction of a fictional California-esque state is totally astounding, replete with buildings, streets, varied geography, natural wonders, rolling landscapes, and all juxtaposed by a pissed-off populace. There's a great scene in Lucasarts' Grim Fandango where Manny Calavera, protagonist and reaper, travels to the realm of the living to collect the souls of recently poisoned fast food patrons, and the real world is quite a ridiculous caricature that is completely alien through the eyes of residents of the land of the dead.
Katamari Damacy is unique in that the protagonists are not human at all, but permanent residents of deep space. To The King of All Cosmos and The Prince, Earth is one planet of millions, but it is not just any planet. The Earth is populated by excitable little people who have absolutely littered their entire planet with stuff, and it is this stuff that makes Earth a suitable place to collect materials to repopulate space with stars.
Stuff here, stuff there, stuff everywhere! Not only can anything smaller than your katamari be rolled-up and added to the clump, but every collected item can later be examined replete with a concise but innocently baffling description in the limited omniscient of the space-faring royal family. Some such descriptions of the hundreds upon hundreds of ordinary objects and creatures include:
Coconut Crab -- "A crab with strong claws. It doesn't look anything like a coconut at all..."
Peach -- "A butt-shaped fruit that is more tasty than butts."
Faucet -- "Hot and cold water comes out of the same place. We are amazed."
Loud Momma -- "Her voice is loud and when she laughs, babies start screaming."
This is why the game is deserving of critique - because the game itself is a critique of urban civilization. It patently points out how much more complex and frivolous and ludicrous our lifestyle is compared to the orderly motion of the galactic ocean.
Furthermore, this analysis goes to show how effective the game is at alleviating stress! Consider all the things you worry about in a day - the cost of living, pollution, rush hour traffic, long lines, crime, the environment, the fact that you'll never visit all the places you want to see, etc. All these things become insignificant in Katamari Damacy. You needn't worry about any issues - any objects - larger than your katamari until later on because for now they are simply obstacles, and anything smaller is all but an insignificant bump. To The Prince, ignorance is bliss. All that matters is to keep on rolling. Put your frustrations aside, block out all unneccesary data, and just keep on rolling. Just push and push, your katamari grows and grows, and before you know it you're towering over people and cars and buildings and mountains until the very curvature of the planet is a minute detail of the great cosmic tapestry.
There are a million possible interpretations of this depiction of reality. One could argue that the game is an advocate of Buddhism, declaring earthly luxuries as mere white noise. Or pe
> Game theory is still new
Glad to hear it's new, they won't mind changing their name to something that isn't taken already then: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory
> That's pretty much genius right there.
That's pretty trite right there, actually. I think pretty much every stoned high school student has thought the same thing at one time or another.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.