Whats the role of Publisher and Developer....

... in the actual IDEA for a game?

I mean doeas a Publisher have an idea for a game and it gets a Developer to make a game, or does a Developer has and idea for a game and it looks for a Publisher to help topay for its development and marketing ofit?

Thanks, i always wondered about that.

Of course, if you also own the studio, like MS owned Bungie, it also owned Halo even if that's not their idea to begin with.magicalclick

In most cases publishers are the money, and developers are the ones who actually create the content. It's similar to the relationship between book publishers and authors, or record companies and musicians, or movie studios and production companies. Typically publishers will fund the entire development of the game (as well as marketing and distribution), and once it's released they will take the full cut minus platform and retailer costs until they've made bake all of the money they put up previously to fund it. Once that happens, the developer will start making a certain percentage as royalties. It's also typical for a publisher to retain ownership of an IP or exclusive future publishing rights for that studio as part of their contract.

Some publishers (like EA) have their own development studios, so they handle both ends. Or they might provide some development assistance to the developer under contract. Or in some cases a development studio might be big enough that the publisher doesn't give them full funding, and instead they just handle some marketing and distribution. This is how Valve and EA handled The Orange Box.

It seems that EA ows most of the games out there, for example, and i always thought that the actual idea of a game always came from a developer. But lately i was reading Dead Space comic and it had EA plastered all over it without even mentioning Visceral Games in thetiny print.

So are games like Dead Space, Mirors Edge,The Saboteurthe brainchild of EA or its developers?

It seems that EA ows most of the games out there, for example, and i always thought that the actual idea of a game always came from a developer. But lately i was reading Dead Space comic and it had EA plastered all over it without even mentioning Visceral Games in thetiny print.

So are games like Dead Space, Mirors Edge,The Saboteurthe brainchild of EA or its developers?

juzek

[QUOTE="magicalclick"]Of course, if you also own the studio, like MS owned Bungie, it also owned Halo even if that's not their idea to begin with.lazyathew

After Conker a lot of Rareware's games were published by them. Also Nintendo only partially owned Rare they didn't own majority control of Rare. If the publisher owns majority stake in the company then I think the IPs they made are owned by the Publisher. In the case of Rare Nintendo only owned 49% of Rare the rest Rare owned.