Sekai Project bringing planetarian to Steam, and also assisting the Key15th Project! | Kazamatsuri.org

Key News Blog Discussion
#1

Last night, VisualArts president Baba Takahiro tweeted that there would be a planetarian announcement made at Anime Expo in Los Angeles, which caused a bit of speculation on the forums. Today, it was announced that Visual Novel localisation company Sekai Project would be working with Key in an unprecedented partnership to bring planetarian to Steam! The release will feature an updated English translation, “all voices from the original game” (interpret this as you will, we’ll update this post when what this means is more clear), and an expected release date of Fall, with Mac and Linux ports to come in the future.

“The partnership between Visual Arts and Sekai Project is one that will have a positive effect on the industry. Though it had been speculated for years that such a partnership was perhaps impossible, I’m happy to say that we’ve made the impossible, possible.” says Sekai Project’s Chrig Ling. Big words, but as anyone who’s followed Key over the years would know, this really is as huge and unprecedented as it sounds.

But that’s not all! Our friends at Key15th.com have just announced that Sekai Project would also be assisting Key15th in delivering the Key15th Anniversary Letter Project to Key! To those of you who were eagerly awaiting more information on the status of the project, this should come as wonderful news. They even gave our community a little mention on their post, which came as a pleasant surprise to me! They also posted a status update on the project a few days earlier, if you were looking for more details. We wish Key15th all the best in delivering the anthology to Key, and we’ll be right here if the project needs any more support from the community. We’re already counting the days to the 20th anniversary!

Needless to say, this is the biggest news we’ve had since Kazamatsuri.org was formed. If planetarian does manage to sell well on Steam, it would be the final push needed to finally have Key’s major titles like Clannad and Little Busters! receive official English localisations, and on Steam no less! But if it fails, this may be the last straw, and Key might just give up on the western market for good.

I’m declaring now that we, as a community, must do everything in our power to prevent that from happening. Everyone, I give you a new mission! Make sure this game sells well. Share the news, tell your friends about the game, and make sure the game reaches as many people as possible! We will be focusing our efforts to that end. If we’re successful, it’ll mean amazing things to come in the future, and Key’s stories will reach a broader demographic than ever thought possible. Let’s work together to make this dream a reality!

If you want to learn more about planetarian, check out this (mostly finished) information page. You can buy it right now for iOS! We also have a discussion thread for the game on the forums (spoiler warning).

Source: http://www.siliconera.com/2014/07/03/visual-arts-kinect-novel-planetarian-coming-steam/

http://key15th.com/2014/07/status-report-sekai-project-will-help-deliver-the-key15th-anthology

https://twitter.com/blitzwingjp/status/484862584365920256

https://twitter.com/sekaiproject/status/484875902195474432

https://twitter.com/misuzulive/status/484861833119928320

http://bayoab.info/live/live2.php?panel=45.a83d3fef

Credit to @blitzwingjp for the photo used.

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://kazamatsuri.org/2014/07/04/sekai-project-bringing-planetarian-to-steam-and-also-assisting-the-key15th-project/
#2

I’m glad it is Sekai Project. They tend to go above and beyond with their efforts.

Jlist and Mangagamer’s projects are usually buggy, needlessly altered, or just badly written… not to say that is their fault. It may be that those VNs were never created in a way that made them easily translatable, and a lot of the bad writing is the fault of the source material.
Mangagamer do have some great VNs. I think their passion is clearly shown. I’m a big Shuffle! fan (one of my first VNs. Love Rainbow when?) so I love that they keep picking up that franchise. Aside from that though, there is a problem in that Mangagamer’s audience is very much an audience that already exists, and is quite small in the west.

Jlist is a bit better at capturing an audience. An anime fan could go there to look for a copy of Steins;Gate, Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment, or any of the crazy phone cases and comic books based on Attack on Titan. A Vocaloid fan could go there for a copy of Project DIVA. If something suddenly spikes in popularity, chances are Jlist will pick it up. That’s great! However, having to scroll through pages of NSFW game cases to find something isn’t very user friendly - especially not in the west. I don’t even have the courage to see what the website looks like with adblock turned off… sounds scary…

Sekai Project though, they pick up all of the VNs that are easy for new readers (slow and simple, but easy.) They are like an entry gate into the english speaking VN community. They focus on Steam, a reputable system that almost everyone has and is usually SFW (don’t go on Steam at work though, please…) The community on there can help push others into the scene.
My favorite thing about them? Not only do they translate, but they are evidently capable of going through the insides of a VN and ironing out any pesky bugs. What they did with Narcissu is pretty amazing. That’s effort beyond my levels~
It’s also nice to see some more tame VNs get translated too. To tell everyone that not all stories from Japan are set in a school, and not all have craaazy Japanese things.

It’s also nice to finally see that the common belief of Japan not caring about the rest of the world is slowly being shrugged off. I think that, largely in the Japanese Video Game Industry, they are starting to realize that western audiences don’t need to be analyzed and focused on. Many Japanese companies shy away from the west because they don’t understand it, when in reality they could just translate the things they normally create and it’ll sell.
JRPGs and VNs are popular because we don’t really get high quality stuff like that in the west.

Maybe it’s an economy thing. Maybe the mobile industry is pushing Japanese Video Game publishers to find a wider audience.

#3

Well, the Visual Novel industry is definitely losing traction in Japan. I think they’re realising how much potential the western market has to help Visual Novels survive.

#4

After seeing how well WEE and Go Go Nippon sold in the steam, the Visual Arts wanted to jump join the bandwagon, lol.

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#5

I’m not even sure how Go Go Nippon sold so much. The writing made me cringe soooo bad!

#6

Literally let’splayers grabbing onto it because hurrr it’s a lewd anime game

#7

I know Jesse Cox and Crendor did a video on it, but they get away with it because they actually plan to go to Japan. I think they dropped it quickly anyway because the Protagonist was brainless, and most of the stuff was common sense.
Jesse had a discussion with Gaijin Goomba on why the writers were so unaware of what the similarities are between Japan and America.

#8

Planetarian is such a good introduction to Visual Novels! It’s short enough that you can finish it in one or two play sessions, the writing is good, the emotional payoff is great, Yumemi is adorable, Junker is interesting, the setting is cool…

And, in my opinion, the lack of choices reinforce that this is essentially a book, not a game. For players who’ve never experienced a VN before, you can play something like Long Live the Queen and get the impression that Visual Novels are super barebones simulation games. There’s no shortage of players who skip through dialog boxes…but you absolutely must break that habit if you want to enjoy a VN.

1 Like
#9

Just saw this now: http://key.visualarts.gr.jp/product/planetarian/steam/

Official website, even! Looks like Key themselves want to promote this :smiley: