Publishers –
Publishers are the companies that prepare the games so that they can go on sale in the various shops. The games that these companies publish will have either been developed by a different games developer, or in some cases they may have been developed internally by the developer within that company. An example of a major publisher is Activision/Blizzard, this is the company that publishes call of duty and World of Warcraft. Without the publisher in many cases the game may not have been as big as they are because the publishers are in charge of the advertising of the game. Other than advertisement and marketing the publisher is also in charge of manufacturing the product. The publishers also have the right to choose what platforms the games will be available on ; in some cases the publishers may have exclusive deals with the platform holders so it may be an exclusive title. For example Dead rising is a game that is published by Capcom and they have an exclusive deal with Microsoft. In many cases the publishers will also fund the development of the games so that the development of the game can run smoothly. There are many different publishers however a few of my favorites are…
- Ubisoft
- Activision/Blizzard
- Telltale Games
- EA
Sometimes publishers will have something known as first party studios which are developers that are owned by the publishers. One of the well known first part studios are 343 industries, these are the developers of halo. Which has been a console exclusive for many years.
Developers –
The developers are the people that create the game, for smaller games the development team may be small and in most scenarios the creators will all work for the company developing it. However for triple A titles development teams may begin to grow and shrink during the different stages of development. At one time there may be hundreds of members of staff performing different tasks. The reason for different members of staff is because making a huge game with 15 people would be an impossible task to perform in a couple years. Different artists and animators may be hired to add new components to the game but these will only be contract workers, so once the work is done they will be let off by the development team. Other than this many testers will also be hired during the alpha and beta periods of the game, this is so the workers can spot the mistakes and errors in the game so they can be fixed before the final product is released and published. A few of my favorite developers are…
- Rockstar North
- Valve
- Naughty Dog
- Bethesda Softworks
Other Involvement –
Other than the Developers and publishers of games there is also other steps involved before the game can reach the consumer. Once the publisher has done their job of marketing and manufacturing the game it will be passed onto the distributor. These are basically the people who deliver the games to the retailer. The retailers are the shops such as Game or Tesco. These will receive the game just before its release and then on the day of release they are free to sell it to the consumer. The consumer will then get home and be able to play the game. As technology has advanced the publisher has tried to lower the amount of other involvement that is needed through digital releases. Almost all games are now released digitally for download by the consumer so they do not have the go to the retailer to buy the game, instead they can buy it from an online store and play the game once it has downloaded.
joshforrestnextgen 