Developers and Publishers

When a video game is being created there are many processes that the game must go through in order to reach the end product, from the early planning and development stages, to QA testing and finally, when the game is passed on to a pusblisher and released.

There are two main 'contributors' to the production of a game- the game developers and the publisher. The game developers are the actual creators of the game, consisting of a studio of programmers, designers, artists and testers, whereas the pusblisher is (usually) a seperate company that actually 'release' the game. Pusblishing companies have little say in the creative aspects of designing the game itself, but they are nevertheless crucial to the release of the finished product- the publisher handles all marketing of the game (which includes advertising), packaging and distributing to retail for sale, also providing financial backing for the development of the game in some cases. Without a publisher, a developer would find it impossible to sell their game to the public as they need discs, boxes and manuals to be made and distributed on a mass scale- and without any advertisement the game would also fail to even sell or make a profit. The largest companies such as Nintendo and Sony have their own development studios and can afford to both develop and publish their own products, and it has become common for wealthy publisher to buy out smaller developers and thus develop and release their own games.