VisualArt's
VisualArt's (株式会社ビジュアルアーツ, Kabushikigaisha Bijuaru Ātsu), formerly Visual Artist Office (ビジュアルアーティストオフィス, Bijuaru Ātisuto Ofisu), is a Japanese publishing company specializing in the publishing and distribution of visual novels for a large list of game developers. VisualArt's has developed the game engines their brands currently use, including the current engine, called Siglus, and older engines RealLive and AVG32. VisualArt's also handles the selling and distribution of these games. The games published are mostly for a male audience, though they also publish games targeted towards women as well. They are well known for the publishing of games by the studio Key such as the famous visual novels Kanon, Air, and Clannad.
The company has coined a new type of visual novel called the kinetic novel where unlike in visual novels where the player is periodically given choices to make, there are no choices whatsoever and the player watches the game progress as if it were a movie. One of Key's games entitled Planetarian: The Reverie of a Little Planet was the first game produced under the kinetic novel name. In addition to games, VisualArt's also releases music CDs for video game music. Of special note among the artists sold under this label is I've Sound, a techno/trance music production group who was the first in the adult game industry to perform at the Nippon Budokan in October 2005.
