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CLANNAD pre-Kickstarter launched by Sekai Project

Sekai Project has launched a Prefundia for their CLANNAD Kickstarter where you can comment on pricing, reward tiers etc. on a mock Kickstarter page. The preliminary funding goal is set at  $140,000, which is the threshold for SP to be able to offer hard copies (and a host of other merch). $100,000 was previously mentioned as the funding goal for purely digital distribution, but this detail has now been removed from the page. Also mentioned is potentially getting updated art from the PS3 version of CLANNAD as a stretch goal.

When Sekai Project first announced their acquisition of CLANNAD there were many questions regarding translation quality. SP said they would work with Doki, a fan translation group who were re-translating the VN at the time. Doki was reportedly basing their translation on the initial CLANNAD translation project (if you’ve read CLANNAD in English, that’s what you got), which did a poor job.

After a great deal of vagueness (which seems to be endemic to the SP process by now), Sekai Project has finally given a conclusive answer: they will be hiring an experienced team of professional translators for a complete re-translation.

After much debate and consideration, we have decided to re-translate the game in order to provide the best possible translation for CLANNAD! The team of translators we have hired to work on CLANNAD are industry veterans who have worked on many titles such as the hit series Attack on Titan’s manga and light novel.

Complain about Sekai Project working on already-translated titles or no, you have to admit the re-translation is of real value here.

When asked, SP’s CEO dovac (Raymond Qian) put the release at “end of 2015 ideally”. Company PR being what it is, presumably the feels train won’t be taking passengers quite that early.

Zakamutt

Writer of irreverent VNTS commentaries, shadowy Fuwanovel string puller, Swedish, ambivalent toward meatballs. Brave Fuwanovel Skype Group memeber (rip), technically a reviewer, chronic everything staller. I am all these things and more, but mostly I'm really lazy. Loves yuri, reading, chocolate, and quality sugar-free colas. Hates VNs with too many choices and long walks on the beach.

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anon
9 years ago

Got to love a company with more kickstarterers than finished projects.
It boggles my mind that people keep giving money to dovac for holding all these games for ransom.
Has Sekai ever spent a single cent of their own money to “translate” these games?

anon2
anon2
Reply to  anon
9 years ago

Considering they don’t get any money from these projects – that money goes to the developers and licensors they’re releasing the games of – I don’t think that that’s something you can hold against them at this point (about the spending their own money comment).

From the ALICE IN DISSONANCE blog (http://projectwritten.com/blog/fault-milestone-one-kickstarter-update/): “In all seriousness though we don’t know how to thank Sekai Project enough and we mean that quite literally because they’ve refused to take any portion of our Kickstarter funds, even when we insisted to pay them for their labor. And unless they’ve been selling our game on the side without us knowing, SP has made exactly $0.00 by helping us out. If anything they’re at a loss considering the amount of time they spent aiding our Kickstarter campaign, dealing with Steams backend, merging localization and etc, etc… Their initial pitch to us was to “help Japanese doujin circles get exposed in the West while still keeping the developer empowered” and they sure as hell haven’t deviated from that philosophy.”

In terms of things being available, the first previously TLed episode of WEE is out with EP2 coming soon, the “early access” version of fault ~milestone one~ is already available and seeing consistent updates that add more TLed text, and their first kickstarter Moe Headphones has already shipped all of its rewards except for a stretch goal extra that was only mentioned a little while before the campaign ended. Their previous Kickstarter projects may not be complete, but they are all seeing tangible progress and Sekai Project is open to answering questions about them.

From what I understand they do have TLers on staff who are translating the WEE novels as well as fault ~milestone one~ (not forgetting that they translated the entirety of the Moe Headphones books) – and from the super low profit margins they’re probably making on some of the Steam sales so far, I really doubt that anyone at SP is getting rich off making these games available in English.

Holding these games for ransom? Unless something uncharacteristic of SP occurs, I don’t see why anyone would claim this. So far SP has been far more open about what is happening with games on their release slate than JAST has been about their Nitro+ properties. Considering the current ENG market for VNs, that should say alot about how much they care about these games succeeding outside of Japan.

anon
Reply to  anon
9 years ago

Don’t see how the money from Clannad or Grisaia series will be going to developer, apart money they’ll use to pay for the licenses.
As far as holding VNs for ransom that’s precisely what they’re doing with Grisaia series, the first game is already translated and the second one was being translated by the same team until SP got involved, now unless we give them $120,000 they’ll sit on the license for two games that won’t be getting translated anymore.
I don’t remember JAST doing something like, they just licensed Steins;Gate after it was translated by fans, hired the team that did that translation, did some minor edits and released the VN. Even if they had decided to just sit on the license forever and never release the official version of the VN nothing would be lost.

anon
Reply to  anon
9 years ago

>I really doubt that anyone at SP is getting rich off making these games available in English.
Never said that, but they do run a 100% risk free business. Even if somehow their products don’t sell a single copy on steam, which is highly unlikely, and they spent every single cent from every kickstarter on localizing and paying for licenses, which is even more unlikely they won’t lose any money.
They’re not the second coming of Christ who are doing this out of the kindness of their heart or at a loss. They’re a middle man with shitty PR and a CEO that makes Jacob from Fakku look like a nice guy.

Lost Concept
9 years ago

This may be the start of something big. Maybe more companies will tap into the translated visual novel market. Fingers crossed.

sean richard
9 years ago

if there is a PS4 and or MAC version I’ll support it

HC
HC
Reply to  sean richard
9 years ago

Go on SekaiProject’s tumblr page, and ask them.

Vinn
9 years ago

Well the KS page just launched. Why is this launching before Grisaia?

zoloft147
9 years ago

I don’t understand the points of redoing any old VNs. Sure there are people out there, bi***ing about inferior translation quality. But the majority of hardcore fan don’t give a damn as long as the message from the game writer is delivered. Why not spend time doing other projects that are on hiatus now? Seriously, I’m willing to pay $100-$200 for a >50 hrs novel to be translated and not sloppily edited. I’m not spending a cent on stupid re-translation.

trackback
9 years ago

[…] of what you might want to know about the history of the project can be found in my earlier post about the Prefundia page, so I’ll just re-iterate two key […]