Multitasking Game Companies (Developers & Publishers)

Many video game companies in the industry have more than one role/job to fulfill especially if we are talking about the mega or global companies. This shows us companies just don't limit themselves to one particular role whether this is being a games developer or a games publisher, but rather companies sometimes do both. These roles of either a developer or a publisher are the industry's two most important jobs without them games wouldn't be made/created or wouldn't get the green light to be sold in shops.

We all know the job of a games developer, right? Well I'll be quick then explaining just what this role is should one be completely new reading this. The game developer role sees the creation and technical side of making games, for an example the programming elements in a game of a door opening or an action in the game taking place will be triggered due to the programmings putting these events in place, a publisher does not concern itself with such things. A game developer are the ones (company) who comes up with the idea but before any work begins on the project they must first find funding this is where publishers come into the mix.

A game publisher's role is to provide funding and marketing to a particular game that has been created by the developers who approached the publisher. A publisher handles all the business elements of a game project and rarely gets into the technical side as this is left for the developers to do. Publishers are often seen as the "suits" within the industry with some publishers having a "cut throat" attitude in the industry. Publishers decide whether a game gets made based on the pitch from the developers and if all goes well publishers will make sure the game is distributed to shops once the project has been finished.

Then there are companies who do both jobs as developer and publish their own games this usually involves such as Capcom who develop Resident Evil games as well as publish them, however recently Capcom have been handing developer duties to other companies to help them with their workload. Nintendo are another example of a company who not only makes hardware but develop and publish their own games too as all of the Mario games have been done like this. In fact Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft are guilty of doing triple work as they make game platforms, develop their own games and publish their own or others games too. 

Well I hope you enjoyed this insight on the differences between a publisher and a games developer but they all have one thing on common which is getting the games into our grubby hands :-) I also hope this post will be the last on the business jargon of the industry and we get onto the fun things such as looking at game characters very soon. Thanks for reading, time and your support........I shall see you next time then!

P.S Sorry but no flashy graphics/pictures for this post folks ;-/