Keita Takahashi Moves Out of Video-Game Box

Whimsy Unboxed: Keita Takahashi expands his gaming playground to the world wide web by joining Tiny Speck

Keita Takahashi, one of Japan’s most admired game developers, has joined Tiny Speck, a startup built around a social game called Glitch. Takahashi’s vote of confidence, together with the $10 million raised in April, enhances Tiny Speck’s prospects in the massively multi-user online (MMO) gaming sphere.

The courtship began a few months ago when Takahashi played some Glitch, which is still in the testing phase. Takahashi found that he shared in common with the Tiny Speck team “deep beliefs in curiosity, humor, absurdity, and above all a belief in the positive power of play.”

“His power of imagination and ability to realize something wholly unique and different stands out in the history of games,” reads a Tiny Speck blog post about Takahashi.

By moving over to the internet-based MMO universe Takahashi brings his work in alignment with his longstanding utopian vision of unifying all gaming platforms into a single, less expensive one.

Takahashi, 35, is best known for the Namco Bandai video game Katamari Damacy, a tour de force of whimsy that has sold millions of copies since it debuted in 2004. His most recent project was Noby Noby Boy released for Playstation 3 in 2009, then ported to iPhone/iPod/Touch/iPad last February.

A bout of soulsearching about the future direction of his career ultimately prompted Takahashi to leave the Japanese gamemaker last year. He will be moving his family from Tokyo to Vancouver, Tiny Speck’s home base. Takahashi studied sculpture as an art student before joining Namco Bandai.

“I am so inefficient I only made 4 games in 11 years,” he notes.

In addition to designing games, Takahashi led the redesign of the playground at Woodthorpe Park in the city of Nottingham, England. In October 2010 he and his wife Asuka Sakai, a well known composer, launched uvula as a vehicle for his freelance game design and playground design.

Tiny Speck was founded by Stewart Butterfield who had co-founded the photo-sharing site Flickr.