I'm not familiar with his work (though I did read the wikipedia entry). Can those of you who are familiar with his work enlighten me on what this might mean for Glitch?
We are so thrilled that you will grace the Glitch team with your expertise and good looks.
Things are starting to look up around here already! Konnichi wa....
not only am i excited to see what creative dimension he will add to the amazing technology platform that is glitch*, but a decent handful of my bestest, smartest, coolest, creativest and all around most favouritest gamer friends who took a look at the glitch trailer or even tested for a while and then said "meh" and moved on .. i'm pretty sure that this will very likely get them to give glitch a second chance at seeing glitch as something more than side-scrolling farmville.
which is good for me, selfishly, coz more of my buddies might want to play!
seriously i can count like 5 friends of mine who have largely passed on glitch over the course of the beta, who will be blown away by this news.
*i mean seriously guys, what glitch is doing for flash in the browser is essentially a miracle.
"I'm not familiar with his work (though I did read the wikipedia entry). Can those of you who are familiar with his work enlighten me on what this might mean for Glitch?"
katamari damacy is considered one of the most innovative games of .. i guess the last ten years or so,
it borders on being an "art game" but unlike most "art games" it was brought out for a mainstream console, sold well and gathered a large following because it was just .. well .. too damn fun for words.
you sort of play this little dude who pushes around this magnetic ball thing that gathers all the items of various sizes .. ok just watch this video ..
I'm really excited about this for Glitch but also for purely selfish reasons, as I do think it will bring back some of my "meh" friends. I'm particularly excited to see the reaction of some of my friends working at a major PC gaming mag who've been waiting for Glitch to turn a corner so they can give it the review they've been hoping it deserves. The potential of and excitement for Glitch has been palpable for awhile now and I hope this is what pushes it over the top and helps it deliver what we've all been hoping for.
This is fantastic news :) Katamari ruled my life for months when I first played it and I can't wait to see what Keita Takahashi brings to Glitch. Even my too-kewl-for-skewl gamer boyfriend thought this was amazing news, so I think it will help Glitch get the reception it deserves with the critics as well as the players.
Congratulations to, well, everyone. Tiny Speck, Keita, Canada, us testers... man. Huge news. Gigantic news.
Seriously, you talk to any gamer who follows the "scene" and likes to see games that are different and you tell them "Keita Takahashi is going to be working on a MMO" and their eyes will bug out.
You want good reason to have some down time between tests? This news (although it will obviously be some time before we see big parts of his influence) is a damn good one. (Pardon my mild swearing but... DAMN!)
i guess if i was to get all critical [in the purely analytic meaning of the word] i would say that Keita Takahashi's primary strength as a game designer is in an unbounded approach to the *scale* of the game experience.
in Katamari, the seamless sense of a continually expanding gamespace contributes to what Roger Caillois calls ilinx, or 'vertigo', in "Man, Play and Games".
he defines play as having four constituent properties ..agon (competition), alea (chance), mimicry (simulation), and ilinx (vertigo)
Vertigo is, in my opinion, the most underrated and neglected elements of play... and Takahashi is a master of it, among many other things.
this new yorker article about shigeru miyamoto talks about the concept a bit ..
more specifically, i'm also hoping that he'll be able to explore and and address some of the concerns about glitch i had in this super early topic but have sort of given up on over time as the gameplay and presentation has stagnated somewhat ..
that's funny nanookie, i suddenly felt like my smooth muppety nakedness (that happened as a result of *your* song btw!) just could not do in a time like this so i got dressed up all fancy-like :))))))
Congratulations to TinySpeck on acquiring an amazing intellectual property such as Keita! A legend in the making with his creativity and innovation. And downright silliness that is Katamari (I love Katamari... I just can't play it for long periods at a time, else I get motion sick).
And many Congratulations and welcome to Keita! I can't wait to see what kinds of endeavors this will bring to Glitch. I'm even more excited than I was previously about this game. :)