Originally from here, but it seems like the webmaster(s) completely removed it. This flash mini game is based on a Japanese video game (Playstation 2) called Katamari Damacy 塊魂 designed by Keita Takahashi and published by Namco. The game’s plot concerns a tiny Prince on a mission to rebuild the stars, constellations and Moon, which his father has accidentally destroyed. This is achieved by rolling a magical sticky ball called a katamari around various locations, collecting increasingly larger objects, ranging from thumbtacks to schoolchildren to mountains, until the ball has grown large enough to become a star.

Although not necessarily implied in any of the games, playing it made me think that the plot is an excellent metaphor for the corporate world: Save for a King destroying the universe, every company has a katamari which starts to grow as they become more successful and as they increase in size they can even consume other katamari. The true underlying goal of any company, large or small, is to make more money ad infinitum, consequently growing and expanding to a monolithic size (Microsoft, Sony, Adobe to name a few) So what? Well the problem with this, as I see it, is that monopoly is inevitable because start-up katamari in mature markets have no chance unless they play in a niche market, which cuts off new blood and fresh inovation. Even if fair competition legislation tries to prevent this, companies dodge it by acquiring smaller companies in other markets (Microsoft and Yahoo! acquisitions being prime examples). More over, infinite growth creates equally big problems in a finite space as more energy and resources is consumed from limited sources. In the flash game even the grass is eventually consumed until there is nothing left to collect.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 17th, 2006 at 3:03 pm and is filed under Philosophy, Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.