Katamari Damacy Insurance?

A few days ago while I was watching tv over break, I saw a pretty interesting commercial. It starts out with a man who is walking down a steeply inclined road. He then trips, falls, and begins rolling down the hill, collecting debris as he goes. As he rolls more and more debris is collected, creating a massive ball which in turn collects more objects as it goes. This screamed Katamari Damacy to me, and I was expecting an advertisement for the game itself, guessing that the software company had decided to launch a larger marketing campaign in response to its cult following. My expectations were certainly not realized. The commercial concludes as an advertisement for an insurance company, with an SUV following from the giant ball at the end. Watch the clip here on geekologie. It seems to me that the commercial has to have been inspired by the game - this website claims that this is the case, but hardly seems a definitive source. If it is inspired, I think this is an interesting instance of a video game pervading popular media in a fairly quiet way. Katamari Damacy is something of a smash hit among a small group of players, but it is far from a mainstream game (or so it seems to me). I'm curious as to whether others have seen this commerical and/or had the same reaction to it as I did. Is it directly inspired? If it is, what implications follow about video game culture?

Final Project

I've been thinking a bit about the final project for this class, and I think that our work on Diablo II might lend itself particularly well to working on building something in the MOO. Kristin (who is in my group) had already mentioned this on her blog some time ago, and I think it's right on track. One of the benefits about taking a scholarly approach through the MOO is that we'll actually be able to emulate some of the gameplay of Diablo itself (to a certain extent). Obviously we can't do anything like building an avatar and fighting (clicking repeatedly on) monsters, but the RPG sytle should lend itself well to the program. We can certainly incorporate the emphasis on traveling from area to area, unlocking new areas, and relying on NCP's for assistance. I think we can certainly build in some problem-solving tasks, create some interesting characters to interact with, and create a whole host of items for the user to store in her inventory. Obviously more will have to be done than simply make a poor simulation of the game, but situating a thesis within the framework of the game itself I think should prove quite worthwhile. I'm sure that as we prepare for a our presentation in April, and see what sort of feedback we receive on it will inform our ideas for the final. I'm looking forward to getting a jumpstart on this and playing around in the MOO. I'd certainly appreciate any thoughts from anyone in the class on the possibilities for this format; additionally, if anyone wants to jump on board we could talk about that as a possibility.