Game Publisher
Also: Video Game Publisher
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Game Publisher Career
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 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.
How do I become a Game Publisher?
You duties here are far more business than technical, and many times publishers hire people from the business world with no video gaming experience whatsoever. So if you are not technically-oriented, that’s fine. Try starting start with a degree in entertainment business and that should lead you into an entry level position with a publisher. Of course if you really want to do start on the technical design side of things and switch over, publishers won’t look down on that.