Author Topic: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita  (Read 121058 times)

Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #90 on: January 13, 2015, 09:09:27 PM »
Are there still going to be fangames for PCs?

That's been a question of mine for a while, too, and all I can say is that the PC remains the gold standard of indie/doujin development. After all, the groups that release their games would certainly gain more publicity/profits/whatever if they reach out to the platform of the series they're making derivates of.

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Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #91 on: January 20, 2015, 02:59:53 PM »
It seems at some unknown time, they have removed all the profiles of Play,Doujin! games from both the new page and the old ZUN X PS page.

The page also has an apology for terminating sales of the Gensou no Rondo PS Vita theme, leaving the Gensokyo winter theme as the only product on the page.

I don't know what all that means, but it gives the impression that certain things were not going as smoothly as they expected.
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Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #92 on: January 20, 2015, 03:39:08 PM »
I genuinely hope this had nothing to do with the TSSB incident, because something very wrong is happening if that is indeed the case. However, in my opinion, if the Play,Doujin! campaign is actually called off most fans wouldn't miss anything as the only thing that might be lost is the extra bit of publicity Touhou Project would gain from having fangames on PlayStation.

Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #93 on: January 20, 2015, 03:55:55 PM »
Yeah, it doesn't matter for as long as it doesn't affect you.

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Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #94 on: January 21, 2015, 02:31:56 AM »
I almost want to say that since it's just the Gensou no Ronde stuff gone from the shop that it might be related to that particular circle but I don't want to jump to conclusions.

cuc

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Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #95 on: January 21, 2015, 03:30:39 AM »
They announced they were suspending the distribution of the Gensou no Ronde theme in a Dec 22 tweet, only 4 days after its release. Their page for the theme still exists, but the product itself has been removed from PlayStation Store.

On reflection (with the help of web.archive.org), I think I got the official Play,Doujin site and other sources mixed up. They have never had any profiles for specific games on their site so far, and the only trouble has been with Gensou no Ronde. Sorry for the false alarm.
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Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #96 on: January 21, 2015, 05:17:47 AM »
They announced they were suspending the distribution of the Gensou no Ronde theme in a Dec 22 tweet, only 4 days after its release. Their page for the theme still exists, but the product itself has been removed from PlayStation Store.

On reflection (with the help of web.archive.org), I think I got the official Play,Doujin site and other sources mixed up. They have never had any profiles for specific games on their site so far, and the only trouble has been with Gensou no Ronde. Sorry for the false alarm.

So we only lost a theme out of all of this?
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Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #97 on: January 28, 2015, 09:09:26 AM »
It seems like the reason why Genso no Ronde got taken down was due to a complaint by Senko no Ronde's developer G.rev. I guess they objected to something so clearly lifting their game design, so they took all that down while a deal was worked out. The game is now back on track and the theme has returned to the store.

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Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #98 on: January 28, 2015, 09:49:30 AM »
Tohomemory has looked at G.rev's press release PDF. According to the file:

1. On Dec 19, 2014, G.rev was informed of the Gensou no Ronde PS Vita theme. On Dec 22, they filed a complaint at Mediascape claiming it has infringed their trademark "Senkou no Ronde".

2. On the same day, Mediascape replied, expressing the wish to suspend the theme and negotiate with G.rev, which G.rev accepted.

3. The negotiation commenced on another day between representatives of G.rev and Mediascape, and the developers of Gensou no Ronde. The end results are: the PC version of Gensou no Ronde (which has already been released as a doujin software) will cease production; a G.rev signed a licensing contract, granting them permission to release Gensou no Ronde on PlayStation platforms.

4. The licensing contract is signed in January 2015.


On twitter, Ruw said whether similarly sounding names constitute trademark infringement is surprisingly difficult to determine, with precedents for both sides.

So the moment they start the business, they are immediately taught a lesson that the world of companies have different rules. The way things are going, I don't think "Mysterious Gensokyo" will be able keep the name.

To be more serious, this means they will have to be much more careful in approaching games that contain too overt references to other properties.

EDIT:
The most important compromise ZUN has made for this project, is that he's creating an opportunity for people to be introduced to Touhou from fan games that necessarily contain fanon cliches and high budget voice acting. Back at the time of the Musou Kakyou "Touhou Animation Project" controversy, one of his major points of contention was that by employing high-profile voice actresses, fan works run the risk of making people mistake them for official works and think those were the official voices of Touhou characters.
A small correction about my earlier post.

ZUN discussed the Musou Kakyou problem in a blog post. According to this post, ZUN's editor (in all likelihood, that's Mr. Okonogi) informed ZUN about the existence of Musou Kakyou, and voiced his concern that their use of well-known voice actors may cause confusion. ZUN paraphrased what the editor told him, but expressed no opinion whatsoever about the use of voice actors.

I think ZUN's stance in this blog post is that he believed the editor's concern about voice acting makes sense, but he was not going to actually put up rules about it.
« Last Edit: January 28, 2015, 11:25:13 AM by cuc »
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Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #99 on: January 28, 2015, 02:51:34 PM »
[...] the PC version of Gensou no Ronde (which has already been released as a doujin software) will cease production; a G.rev signed a licensing contract, granting them permission to release Gensou no Ronde on PlayStation platforms.

4. The licensing contract is signed in January 2015.

So you're basically saying the game is now a PS4 exclusive??? Are these the steps towards the commercialization of Touhou many of us fear would happen? As much as I'd like to see the series gain more popularity, letting the corporate world pull the strings is not the best idea.

This also brings up an interesting fact. Doujin games were meant to stay low-profile. Once they start spreading beyond fans and circles things might get messy, like what happened here. I think this might be one of the prime reasons for ZUN not allowing distribution of fangames outside certain distribution channels.

cuc

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Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #100 on: January 28, 2015, 04:14:41 PM »
First, this is a wholly unintended consequence due to threat of legal action. Unless G.rev's complaint involves things other than the game title, it's easy to sidestep by renaming the game, although they've opted to settle with a license instead.

Second, a part of Touhou has gone commercial since ZUN started writing CoLA. Mind that those books are all published via commercial channels. It's the games (and some CD) part that has stayed doujin, and for all we know, will stay doujin. Just today, he said he'd "hate" to release his games on PS console.

Third, the true implication of this case is it shows turning doujin games that are liberal with references into proper console releases can be a business full of legal landmines, and ZUN's merry friends are not as prepared as they thought.
« Last Edit: January 28, 2015, 04:31:18 PM by cuc »
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Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #101 on: January 28, 2015, 05:42:21 PM »
[...] turning doujin games that are liberal with references into proper console releases can be a business full of legal landmines [...]

You couldn't have said that any better. The more I think about this, the more I've noticed that almost all Touhou fangames are derived from some other franchise. Technically that infringes on certain property rights, but it looks like nobody takes action since few people know about these games in the first place. It's only when these games get noticed by "big business" that things start getting complicated.

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Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #102 on: January 28, 2015, 06:08:17 PM »
A big problem with larger companies is the fact that once noticed they are more likely to try and take action, they have a mind to protect their copyright even if they cant win in court. If I remember correctly by law (not sure if Japan has the same issue) if a product name becomes to common (Like the word Coke) the company could lose their copyright to it and then everyone can use it. However I'm not sure if this could be applied to games but it seems pretty common for "clones" (especially with Mobile Games), I've said before that gameplay mechanics can't be copyrighted but who knows how long that could last. 
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Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #103 on: January 28, 2015, 11:09:48 PM »
I doubt being able to copyright or trademark game mechanics or design will come along for a long time or ever. I think it'll boil down to having the same or too simular code, and that isn't east to do. Plus, usually clones are ID'd by the game they are cloning.

Probably just a fight over the name, that's all.

cuc

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Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #104 on: January 29, 2015, 04:06:03 AM »
G.rev CEO Hiroyuki Maruyama has posted a blog post. It's pretty interesting. A summary:

G.rev has known about Gensou no Ronde a few years ago when it was released. Their stance on doujin software has always been one of "tacit approval as long as it was done as personal/fan activities, rather than as a legal person's commercial activities". They could no longer ignore the problem when Gensou no Ronde would become a PlayStation release by a corporate entity.

However, they intended to find a solution as quickly as possible, since they cannot afford the costs of legal actions. Moreover, they are sympathetic to Play,Doujin!'s goals, thus they made the choice of granting a license to the infringers of their trademark.

Maruyama said they feel a deep sense of danger towards the console game market and its developers. Since 2012, G.rev themselves have been unable to publish any games with their own IP, and have relied on contract work to survive. The small and medium sized developers around them have practially given up on developing console games.

10 years ago, there were still several college graduates who joined G.rev with the dream of making arcade games. A few years later, young students with such a dream no longer exist. It is possible that in 5 or 6 years, there won't be any student who dreams of making console games.

Maruyama said, they hope the Play,Doujin! programme can allow more amateur or semiprofessional creators to become pro developers. However the doujin culture has created a lot of legally grey areas. A bright future might be ahead of these amateur makers after these grey parts are removed. That's their thinking behind the license.



Aside from reminding us how making a console games as a small developer is an uphill battle in Japan, the important part is that they said they tolerate doujin games as long as they stay doujin, and they can't afford lawyers.
« Last Edit: January 29, 2015, 03:30:45 PM by cuc »
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Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #105 on: January 29, 2015, 04:45:23 AM »
So a case of stay on your side of the line and we'll stay on ours huh?
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Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #106 on: January 29, 2015, 07:07:39 AM »
Minor note, but I think "legal person" is better interpreted as "corporate entity".

I'm still not entirely sure that G.rev can "license" that style of game, but that's a whole other can of worms.

cuc

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Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #107 on: January 29, 2015, 08:12:04 AM »
G.rev's complaint was only about the game name, which sounds too similar to their own trademark, and Ruw's tweets also only mentioned this problem. I think the license is entirely for the "Senkou no Ronde" trademark.
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Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #108 on: January 29, 2015, 08:15:52 AM »
Do you think this could cause issues for many other titles like Megamari or would it only become a issue for the ones getting on PSN?
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Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #109 on: January 29, 2015, 08:38:55 AM »
Like G.rev has demonstrated, the entire billion-yen doujin business relies on an unspoken agreement by the cultural industry that doujin creations will be tolerated, because they have nurtured both a loyal fan base and potential creators. Except for the comparatively few infamous cases where companies like Nintendo got litigation-happy, they won't do anything to doujin games. I'd say yes, it is only a problem for titles coming to PSN.

Game mechanics are generally difficult to patent. The legal problems doujin games may face should mostly be about names, likeness and music, which can all be changed.

Minor note, but I think "legal person" is better interpreted as "corporate entity".
/Scratches head while reading wikipedia

Well, yeah, I suppose it is highly unlikely for a sovereign country to use G.rev's characters for commercial purposes. Also religious or non-profit organizations are all "corporate entities".
« Last Edit: January 29, 2015, 09:44:22 AM by cuc »
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Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #110 on: January 29, 2015, 02:57:50 PM »
Today's Dengeki PlayStation magazine published an interview about Play,Doujin!. The interviewees are SCE's Akinari Ito, Mediscape's Ezaki and Oyamada, ZUN, Aquastyle's JYUNYA (Mysterious Gensokyo), and Cubetype's Yuro (Gensou no Ronde).

- Mediascape inquired ZUN about the idea in July of 2014, only two months prior to the announcement in September. They did announce it super early.

- How did ZUN feel about the idea? ZUN said he didn't know, but he felt if (the Touhou games are released on PlayStation) they'd become not very different from the numerous indie games available. He debated with himself for 2 or 3 hours, and arrived at a compromise: he can't start releasing his canonical Touhou games on PS consoles all of a sudden. He will wait and see the consumers' opinion.

- Ito investigated Touhou fan games, and decided on the three initial games himself (Mysterious Gensokyo, Genius of Sappheiros, and Sky Arena). He suggested to Ezaki and Oyamada "you must have these games".

- In the month following the announcement, Ezaki received over 10 mails (about the programme) every day.

- ZUN's picture used in the announcement trailer was taken in a haste, at the third pub during a drinking spree. Ezaki said they needed ZUN's face to show his approval.

- Ito said they originally wasn't going to announce the programme at the SCE conference. He thought that announcing it at the conference about SCE's support of indie developers would create a good sense of dissonance, generating more buzz, so he arranged for it.

- Oyamada knew Cubetype through his personal connection, and introduced them to the project.

- Cubetype's Gensou no Ronde is the furthest ahead in development, since it's being developed for PS4, which is not too different from a PC.

- ZUN asked the others about how they got started making Touhou fan games. Yuro got into the fandom by watching Touhou M-1 Grand Prix.

- JYUNYA first read about Touhou (the PC-98 games) about 15 years ago in a doujin game column of a game magazine. He later played the EoSD demo at a friend's home. He was not good at danmaku shooters, but EoSD made the difficulty more manageable. His love of the game led to his participation in the first Reitaisai.

(Note: JYUNYA was not the founder of Aquastyle. Before 2003, Aquastyle was called Aqua Studio, which dates back to around 1995. JYUNYA says in this interview his doujin activities started 12 years ago.

There are some fandom rumors that Aquastyle has always been an important and influential doujin game circle that even ZUN pays great respect to. As far as I can tell, these rumors are unfounded.)

EDIT:
The rest of the Dengeki interview is generally unimportant. ZUN actually mentioned that he started making doujin games because he hated his job as a commercial game developer. "In actuality, you don't have any freedom in making games in a game company," he said that about the appeal of doujin.
« Last Edit: January 31, 2015, 07:50:07 AM by cuc »
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Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #111 on: January 30, 2015, 02:56:50 PM »
The most important info in this post is at the bottom.

I'm still not entirely sure that G.rev can "license" that style of game, but that's a whole other can of worms.
Correction to my post: the G.rev press release has mentioned both the trademark and copyright of Senkou no Ronde being infringed. I wonder if G.rev would make the copyright infringement claim alone, had the game's name be something other than Gensou no Ronde.



From the PD official site: by buying the Dengeki PlayStation magazine from the PS Reader Store, you can download an exclusive PS Vita theme featuring the 4 PD titles.



In the Weekly Famitsu magazine released on the same day, there is another interview with ZUN, Ezaki, Oyamada and Ito. It is shorter, but contains more important information.

A funny side note: Dengeki uses the "indies" spelling (see my post), while Famitsu uses the "indie" spelling.

Another note: the article's sidebar refers to Genius of Sappheiros as "Touhou Soujin Engi V", which would be a seriously misleading name for a PS Vita version.

They started by discussing the purpose of the programme: to secure the future of doujin games. According to Ezaki, Windows-based doujin games have already plateaued. In 2013, SCE launched the "PlayStation Loves Indies" support programme for indie developers, and he thought this could be a way to revitalize doujin games.

From Ito's point of view, you cannot have doujin games without Touhou Project. So when ZUN's friend Ezaki and Oyamada approached him, he immediately recognized they have a common goal. What remained was to convince ZUN.

ZUN's reaction to SCE's offer was: "do they absolutely need my participation?" He thought he simply didn't have enough time (to do the work involved in porting Touhou). On the other hand, he has no problem giving them the permission for Touhou derivative games.

The interviewer asked ZUN why he was no longer against Touhou appearing on other platforms. ZUN said his change took place during the Indies Game Fest 2013 event at Tokyo Game Show. The event made he feel that on one hand, "it won't be long until indie games becomes everyone's favorite thing", and on the other hand, "doujin games does not have the future these things have".

(If you recall, he went to Atlanta immediately after Tokyo Game Show. Those two weeks must be unforgettable for him.)

ZUN will not oversee the PD games. (That is to say, he would not request any changes to make the games conform to canon better.)

Regarding technical support for developers, Ezaki said they will facilitate knowledge sharing through measures like an (internal) wiki.

When discussing the freedom developers can enjoy, Ito put things into a new perspective by saying "Touhou is the only permission Play,Doujin has for derivative games at present", and SCE would provide as much support as possible to enable developers for content they need. In other words, their long-term plan is to obtain licenses to publish fan games for other IPs.
« Last Edit: January 31, 2015, 07:50:26 AM by cuc »
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Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita (interview added)
« Reply #112 on: January 30, 2015, 05:16:35 PM »
So for their long term goal we could get fan games of type moon games or square enixand other things that are similar, am I correct in thinking this? Just trying to understand what they fully mean.
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Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita (interview added)
« Reply #113 on: January 31, 2015, 01:30:38 AM »
Could be, because if memory serves, D.N.A. Softwares also made a Madoka game, so they could be trying to get that going as well.

Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #114 on: February 04, 2015, 11:59:29 AM »
ZUN tweeted a link to the full text of the interview that was published in Dengeki PlayStation magazine vol. 583.

Quote
こんな酔っ払い記事が。「座談会」←間違い 
「呑み会」←正解ですな >『東方Project』とPlayStationの今後は!?
ZUN氏らが参加した座談会を全文掲載【電撃PS】
http://dengekionline.com/elem/000/000/997/997464/
@dengekionlineさんから

Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #115 on: February 08, 2015, 11:33:55 AM »
Funny that ZUN and Fumio mentioned that it's best to use the translations in the Western Touhou Wiki for localization purposes.  :)
Guess it's time for us to do something to help them directly?

cuc

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Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #116 on: February 08, 2015, 11:42:48 AM »
Funny that ZUN and Fumio mentioned that it's best to use the translations in the Western Touhou Wiki for localization purposes.  :)
Guess it's time for us to do something to help them directly?
From what I know about the game localization business, and from the general context of the interview, that particular conversation is basically saying "we know zilch about how localization works, let's just have some idle thoughts for the moment".
« Last Edit: February 08, 2015, 12:29:49 PM by cuc »
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Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #117 on: February 08, 2015, 11:55:20 AM »
From what I know about the game localization business, and from the general context of the interview, that particular conversation is basically saying "we know zilch about how localization works, let's just have some idle thoughts for the moment".

Updating the interview information is on my to-do list. My to-do list moves slowly.

I can see why they're not too certain with it. Even official localization company took some liberties or picked the easy way out with the translations into English, and end-up losing some contexts or the interesting parts in the original. Though they sometimes made up some funny stuff to improvise. From what I know, it's apparent in recent games like GG Xrd, and even old NISA or Atlus games.
And their "quality checks" are more often just skimming of scripts to boot.

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Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #118 on: February 08, 2015, 11:59:26 AM »
Localization is always going to be a subjective thing. Like, I still don't like how certain lines are translated in the official games, but I can't really change them because they're just stylistic preferences. Also, what half of the people are going to think is "interesting", the other half are going to find confusing, and so forth.

As for quality checks, they need to be approached with the same care (or even more so) than the amount used in the draft's creation. The problem comes down to time, for the most part.

cuc

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Re: Touhou fan games will appear on PlayStation 4 and Vita
« Reply #119 on: February 18, 2015, 02:43:06 PM »
I still haven't get to translating stuff from the extended interview, but we have an update.

CUBETYPE is calling for players to participate in a closed beta test for Gensou no Ronde. The test will be performed using PCs rather than real PS4s.

According to their site, the PS4 version of the game will be a great update over the PC version, with full-HD graphics, new characters, and gameplay and balance update.

They also claimed the termination of the PC version is not a great loss, as they've practically stopped supporting the game.
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