Game Publisher

A Game Publisher finances a video game’s development, handles the marketing and release of the game, and gets the returns on its sales. When you’re a Game Publisher, the games you publish can be made by an in-house staff or external Game Developers, but either way your responsibilities stay the same: You manage the business end of the gaming field.

Your daily duties as a Game Publisher could include negotiating distribution deals, designing advertising campaigns, conducting market research, and clearing any licensing issues a game has. You also weigh in on the creative decisions made in the game development process. A lot of times this causes tension between you, who has a focus on market appeal, and the Game Developers, who want artistic freedom. But you write the paychecks, so your say in creative decisions usually wins out.

Developers might resent this heavy-handed control, but it is very difficult to develop on a large scale without working with you. For though video gaming started out as a fairly accessible field, the increase in computer power and graphics has scaled up the man power and resources needed to produce a video game. This creates cost barriers to making it big in the mainstream market, so if Developers want their game to be a best-seller they need your resources to sustain and market their product.