If you haven't read part one, I recommend doing that. Are we caught up now? Thank you.
Last week, I wrote about the ongoing We Love Katamari experiment I was conducting on my students; this week, I have the results. For this post, I've chosen a few of the more interesting responses from a group of 50 that's composed mostly of non-gamers. Their goal was to explain their experience with the game using the concept of "probing" (essentially, the scientific method) from Steven Johnson's book, Everything Bad is Good for You; basically, I wanted an account of an attempt to figure out the We Love Katamari. As I said before, things like this are always an interesting read to see how the "other side" reacts to our beloved hobby--especially when it's as outlandish as Katamari.
To begin, Student A guessed what could eventually happen later in the game, and picked up on the inherently dickish nature of the King of All Cosmos:
The king was involved in a lot of the talking. I was curious in whether we got to face him in later levels or something like that.
...This student also guessed director's Keita Takahashi's secret wish of being a playground architect.
The player has to walk around his surroundings. In this case it is like a big playground for kids.
Meanwhile, Student B grappled with the slight learning curve of
Katamari's controls:
My first thirty seconds of playing the game were pretty tough. I couldn’t figure out the controls at all. I figured the left analog stick would be to move forward and backward and the right analog stick would be used to move left and right. I was wrong. The controls were so weird I still can’t fully explain how to move which way.
Student C, on the other hand, was feeling remorse over picking up one of the Prince's cousins with her sticky ball of doom:
Near the end of it, I picked up this little guy in a purple suit in my big pile of stuff. And he was wiggling around and yelling. I felt so bad for him, but I didn’t know how to get him out. Was I killing him? Poor little telletubby.
Finally, Student D's account is very funny in a self-effacing way:
Well I learned very quickly that the ball is like gum (the kind of gum you see in the wonka movie) and picks up everything I roll over. It must not be bad to pick stuff up with the ball because I would have been dead within the first minute. Through my journey in this weird game I tried to think to myself what to do next but for the life of me I could not figure it out and trust me I tried. I soon learned though that you can’t mess with some of the things in the game. Those giant sized scorpion looking things are no joke and there not very nice... The little masked dude popped up when I only had one minute left to tell me this important news but I found there was no hope for me. I looked and looked but I did not see what I was supposed to do. My head was wondering and pondering until the clock ran out and my short life with my wonka ball came to an end. So sad too bad.
And with that, our experiment has come to a close. I'll check back in with any other interesting happenings; we're doing video games for a few more weeks, and some of our more work-intensive projects haven't yet begun. To my students: you have been warned. And do your homework!
Related Links:
Katamari in the Classroom, Part 1
Katamari Cake Makes Us Indescribably Happy, But We Will Still Blog About It
The Revolution WILL Be Colorized