Developers, publishers, and service providers

I’ll be honest – I’m off to a rough start. I started this journey before properly understanding what a publisher does. Now that I know more about the division of responsibility and operating models of game developers, publishers, and service providers, I’m going to document what I’ve learned in the past few weeks.

What do game studios need to do?

Make games. Duh. But what does that actually entail?

Depending on the type of game, this can be:

• Engine programming
• 2D art
• 2D animation
• 3D modeling
• 3D animation
• Graphics programming
• Sound design
• Music composition
• Quality assurance

This list is not exhaustive. It’s probably not even half complete.

Game studios need to distribute and sell games. Today this is easier than ever, but it’s a wholly different discipline from game development. Think marketing, sales, and localization.

They also need to manage their resources. This is something that’s common to every business. They need to manage finite resources to actually build and deliver games to their customers. Think accounting, finance, human resources, and project management.

So what does a publisher do?

A publisher can do any of these things (except make the game). Game developers need to do things like marketing, quality assurance, localization, and so on. They can distract from already difficult work.

Different publishers will specialize in different areas. For instance, some may not offer quality assurance. These publishers may be well-suited to developers that prefer to do QA in-house. One of the most important decisions for a studio is whether to work with a publisher or to self-publish. If the developer works with a publisher, it’s also critically important to make sure the publisher is a good fit for the developer and vice-versa.

And service providers?

Service providers are companies that specialize in a single activity. For instance, to develop visual assets or localize a game. Service providers can be leveraged by both game developers and publishers.

Note that a game developer may be a service provider for a publisher.

Which do I choose?

There are two major differences between a service provider and a publisher. The first is cost. When you work with a service provider: you pay them, they do their thing, and that’s the end of the transaction. They’re great for temporarily expanding your team’s capacity or filling a gap.

A publisher, on the other hand, could have some kind of revenue or profit share agreement. You work together, you each get a piece of the pie. The idea is that 50% of 100,000 sales is better than 100% of 1,000 sales. (Note that not all publisher agreements will split revenue like this. The terms of the agreement can vary dramatically.)

The other big difference is the nature of individual vs packaged services. Service providers are highly specialized at what they do. Their existence as a company depends on how well they do that one thing.

With publishers, you get a package deal. This means that the services are more cohesive. The QA team coordinates with the localization team to produce something better than the sum of its parts. But the publisher may not be very good at localization, and there’s no way to get the great QA team minus the not-great localization team.

A game usually involves some combination of a publisher, developer, and service providers. Coordinating them to produce a good game is a skill in and of itself.