GameCity 4: Japanese game designer, Keita Takahashi, masterminding new playground, complete with “dog slide”
Keita Takahashi, creator of Katamari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy, is designing a new playground for Nottingham.
The area chosen for redevelopment is Woodthorpe Grange Park, just on the edge of the city. At the playground announcement, which was held in the Council House ballroom during GameCity, Iain Simons, festival director, described the early stages.
“This is really the event we’ve been working our longest on, since about 2005,” said Simons.
The famous Japanese game designer from Namco Bandai had reportedly been surveying the area since 11 October 2009 to begin preliminary development.
The final version of the playground will be fit for children, grownups, and apparently even dogs. Takahashi was very enthusiastic about including something of a “dog slide” on the land’s natural hillside.
James Dymond, Nottingham council’s parks development manager, was also present to discuss some of the budgetary, health and safety issues that must first be overcome with such a project.
Designing a playground is more complicated than it may first appear, especially with all the approvals, but Takahashi feels it’s “not much different from game design.”
Aaron Lee
Tags: gamecity, keita takahashi, namco bandai, nottingham
