Katamari Damacy is the friendly face of video game power fantasies.
It's a game where you roll up a bunch of stuff to make a weird ball thing bigger that
simultaneously makes you feel utterly unstoppable, and it does so while avoiding the trappings
many games fall into when attempting to elevate the player to some kind of god-like status.
It realises that immediately placing players in a position of power can trivialise an experience;
Katamari starts you off small, unable to roll up much more than pins and stamps and gradually
sees you progress through obstacles of all shapes and sizes until you are, quite literally,
on top of the world.
As Malindy Hetfeld writes for Eurogamer, it's the fulfilment of a power fantasy that requires
no violence at all.
In a word, it's wholesome; proving that games can give us that pure feeling of satisfaction
without sacrificing the childlike wonder its aesthetic invokes.
So why can't I shake the feeling that, the more I read into the game, it isn't the
wholly feel-good experience it might seem from the outside?
It's likely to do with the notion that, while the game is definitely a different take
on the idea of a power fantasy, as much as it makes us feel good, it arguably draws on
some of our less desirable traits as human beings as well—perhaps deliberately so.
See, there may not be the gore or explosions we typically associate with being a violent
powerhouse in a video game, but there is a violent undercurrent to Katamari as I see
it, however abstract.
Its shifts in tone are violent—part of its charm, a good deal of its humour lies in the
fact that it presents itself as this outburst of colour and joy which gives way to sheer
darkness as the king mercilessly berates you at the first sign of failure, or when what
you may see as impressive is shrugged off as not good enough.
It's hilarious to hear this infectiously chirpy, aggressively upbeat soundtrack ring
dissonantly against the blood-curdling screams of the hapless individuals you casually roll
into your pile of rubbish like it was nothing.
The challenge of Katamari is not only to consume as much as you can, but to navigate those
objects, those animals, those people bigger than you; these things not only stop you in
your tracks, forcing you to reorient yourself with the game's somewhat unwieldy controls,
but they knock objects off of your Katamari, costing you valuable progress, all while the
offending party remains totally unphased.
In that sense, perhaps there's an aspect of spite to the way Katamari handles progression.
We've all been pushed around in our lives in one way or another and what Katamari represents
is a means of pushing back; your former prodding tormentors, halting your progression and literally
belittling your achievements, now cower in fear at the sheer size of this absolute mad
lad coming to merge them with the cosmos.
What's more, if you could still call it a fantasy, the game's narrative makes clear
that your desire to overcome is born of frustration.
The king messes up, and subsequently, nonchalantly tasks you with cleaning up the mess of the
entire universe, with controls that remind you you're not inhabiting the weird ball
thing directly but instead the tiny little guy trying desperately to wrangle said weird
ball thing in the face of overwhelmingly large obstacles, all in order to get the job done
that, need I remind you, was not your fault to begin with, whose somewhat challenging
time limits only exist because… the king can't be bothered waiting around for you
to roll up the entire goddamn world.
Far from being a joyous, childlike escape from reality, the game is hitting us dead
in the face with a borderline existential crisis.
It's the reality of daily life for most people—the feeling that you're working
immensely hard under systems that exist to belittle you, just to get through the day.
Just like we've all been pushed around, we've all dealt with unpleasant bosses who
task you with impossible feats then try to act all pally which in turn just ends up distracting
you from what you need to do, and then when you do get it done the reward is… more of
the same.
It's like what Keith Stuart in The Guardian describes as the function of video games not
to elevate us to the level of superheroes, but simply to give us a control that's perhaps
lacking in our day-to-day lives.
Series creator Keita Takahashi has stated that he intended Katamari, with the never-ending
desire of your soon-to-be star to devour more and more meaningless objects, to be a comment
on consumerist culture and what's interesting is how that idea can be extended to the ways
in which the systems driving it – the need to work a terrible job, the financial struggles
people face, etc. - instil a sense of powerlessness in us—the ball never stops rolling, and
we're never allowed to stop pushing it.
It might sound like I'm reaching here but after reading and watching interviews with
the man behind the game, the idea of outward joy and exuberance belying a more cynical
core gradually begins to sound less and less alien.
Takahashi seems to exist at the perimeter of video games.
He jokes about the fact that he doesn't have many friends in the industry and that
the people he worked with on past releases were angered by his methods.
Katamari's origins suggest a genuine desire to change the world of games for the better,
expanding our horizons in terms of what they can say, while future projects seem to bear
a great frustration, a more jaded desire to burn it all down, stemming from his perceived
lack of success in that endeavour.
While clearly driven, he seems to lack the fervour or confidence we associate with quote-unquote
auteurs, that they could only be doing the precise thing they're doing at any given
moment.
Takahashi seemed to fall into video game development and has a tendency to wander.
By his own admission he is disillusioned, but you get the feeling that said malaise
might extend to whatever profit-driven industry he found himself a part of.
I guess it's possible to read Takahashi as the Prince, desperately excited to create
something new by throwing together whatever he can—fashioning something as bright as
a star out of the rubbish we throw on the ground, only for his hopes to be dashed as
the big publisher deems it…
OK, something they could release but nothing world-altering; always wanting to be bigger
no matter the cost to the original vision.
It's a fairly harrowing outlook for a game with one of the most energising intros ever
committed to a video game.
It's strange, though.
I went into this piece fully intending to write about how joyous a game Katamari is;
how the game barges in with its colours and upbeat soundtrack and wacky sense of humour
to show that you can have that power fantasy driven by something other than violent machismo.
As I delved further into my thoughts on the game and the background of its development,
however, it became clear the catharsis of that fantasy being fulfilled might not stem
from such positive emotions.
As the credits roll we're told "the blue planet spins so peacefully, but the sadness
never goes away."
But despite all that, I can't deny that, well, Katamari makes me unbearably happy every
time I play it.
It does act as an escape of sorts; it's as pure a set of mechanics as one can get.
If the overarching narrative is one of thankless toil in service of fixing someone else's
mess, it's a narrative shrouded in such glorious oddity that its darker themes fall
to the wayside in favour of the beautifully simple story told by its gameplay—of controlling
a thing to make said thing bigger, which in turn allows you to overcome previously unconquerable things.
That said, I see it as a testament to the artistry of Takahashi's work that, whether
intended or otherwise and despite appearing so simplistic and cartoonish, there's this
much to read into it.
There's an argument to be made that the chaos of Katamari represents the chaos of
Takahashi's life as an artist as he sees it, and the frustration that he can't quite
control any aspect of his existence.
In other words, he's human, with all the humour, joy, anxiety, anger and irrationality
that entails, and his work, however strange, reflects that.
Rather than merely allowing us to feel power without violence, then, perhaps Katamari makes
a much more universal point about the nature of games and art in general—that rather
than shying away from it, it's often when we lean into absurdity, with all the messiness
and potential darkness that comes with it, that our stories end up tapping more directly
into the heart of what it means to be human.
Well, I didn't expect this piece to go the places it went but I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless!
If you like my work and want to support it directly feel free to check out the Patreon
like these wonderful folks currently on screen, without whose immensely generous pledges this
show simply wouldn't be possible.
Thank you all so much.
Special thanks go to Mark B. Writing, Rob, Nico Bleackley, Michael Wolf, Artjom Vitsjuk,
Ali Almuhanna, Timothy Jones, Spike Jones, TheNamlessGuy, Chris Wright, Ham Migas, Travis
Bennett, Zach Casserly, Samuel Pickens, Tom Nash, Shardfire, Ana Pimentel, Jessie Rine,
Brandon Robinson, Justins Holderness, Christian Konemann, Mathieu Nachury, Nicolas Ross and
Charlie Yang.
And with that this has been another episode of Writing on Games.
Thank you very much for watching and I will see you next time.
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