A game developer is a person that works on video games by supplying coding, audio, visuals or other materials that are put together to form a video game, game developer are not responsible for the advertisement or financial side of business, this is handled by the publishers. Most of the time a game has a team of game developers work on it but with the rise of interest in gaming development sites and tools for creating your own game have began showing up, this leads to people becoming "indie" game developers.
Indie game developers are people who work on games mostly on their own, without the back up of large publishers and without expensive tools, this leads to indie games that focus more on story telling and character development over the larger, more action packed games made by AAA Game developers. An example of an Indie game developer is Toby 'Radiation' Fox, the developer of UNDERTALE, a game that took the internet by storm after its release in September of 2015.
UNDERTALE is a RPG Game that's gimmick is that you don't have to harm anyone, a far cry from the normal grind-fest of RPGs, it earned its popularity with great characters, a memorable story, satisfying yet simple gameplay and a fantastic soundtrack, as Toby Fox is an indie game dev, he didn't have any funding and advertisement so he turned to a site called " Kickstarter", a place where people can present their ideas to the world and be donated money to continue working on their projects.
On the other hand, AAA game developers have a lot of money and most of the time their goal is to make a profit, they would pick a popular game that sells well, make a sequel to it and have their publishing team over-advertise it until there is plenty of hype for the game meaning more sales. An example of this is EA and their FIFA games.
FIFA is notorious for getting sequel after sequel every year with little to no changes, it bandwagons on the football fan base and relies on adding football players to the game so it can sell. While it's sales and scores are good (mostly because of is loyal fan base) the people who know better can easily tell how much of a cash grab the games have become. EA is no stranger to exploiting its loyal fans without any concern for making an entertaining and refreshing game.
Sources -
Game Developer: https://goo.gl/U1qQt
Indie Game Developer: https://goo.gl/pIIeQF
Undertale: https://goo.gl/WxBGFt
Undertale Popularity: https://goo.gl/lFPtWa
Toby Fox: https://goo.gl/ZCz38i
RPG Games: https://goo.gl/2tjHDr
Kickstarter: https://goo.gl/ZyjvPH
EA: https://goo.gl/dBAk
FIFA: https://goo.gl/a9wwXG
FIFA Critiques: https://goo.gl/zX2mhk
Publishers
A publisher is a person or company that takes responsibility with the publishing and advertisement of a game, they work together with the developers to produce trailers, adverts, and other memorabilia that can be used to tease people into gaining interest in the game. AAA game publishers can sometimes invest money into a game and pay for its development, its a risky decision but AAA game publishers have the money to do it.
An example of a good publisher is BioWare, they specialise in engulfing the player in large worlds set in imaginative lands, almost all the games they publish are also produced by them. They were founded in 1995 and quickly earned their popularity with games like Baldur's Gate and MDK2. In 2007 EA brought out BioWare, many die-hard fans argue that this was the death of BioWare but as a nice change of pace EA seemed to keep their ruined hands off the development meaning EA has little to no involvement with the games BioWare develop.
An example of a disliked game publisher is Capcom, they are infamous for the handling of their Megaman licence, numerous cancelled games, false promises and money grubbing tactics have made fanboys of Capcom weary, yet even after so many uneducated decision Capcom keeps shooting themselves in the foot by producing low quality entertainment. Not only this but there have been several reports of Capcom treating their staff poorly, from demanding their lead producer get back to work after almost dying to workers getting hot coffee thrown at their face.
Publisher: https://goo.gl/drg3AX
Bioware: https://goo.gl/GV5WML
Capcom: https://goo.gl/qWQQzh
Capcom scandal: https://goo.gl/nydq8M
Console Manufacturers/ First Party Publishers
Console manufacturers are companies that produce their own gaming consoles, they then sell licenses to third party developers who produce games for the console. The leading console manufacturers as of 2016 are Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. After the video game crash of 83' Nintendo had to advertise their consoles as toys due to the bad rep video games had at the time.
A good example of a console manufacturer is Nintendo, founded in 1889 hey have been around for more than a century. The good thing about Nintendo is that they value gameplay over graphics, they would use older hardware while still being able to create enjoyable games at affordable prices. Even when Sony and Microsoft were releasing their HD consoles Nintendo released the Wii, even though it didn't have greater hardware and it wasn't even HD it sold a phenomenal amount of copies.
A bad example of a Console manufacturer is SEGA, while they started off great with the Genesis (Mega Drive in America) they soon started to release commercial failure after commercial failure, first there was the 32X and the SEGA CD, both attachments for the SEGA Genesis that didn't sell many copies, then the SEGA Saturn, another commercial flop and finally the SEGA DreamCast, the most beloved and cherished console by SEGA fans yet, it was the nail in the coffin that demoted SEGA to a third party developer. With their rash decisions and relying on the quickly dying "hip" and "cool" demographic to keep up sales.
Courses-
Console Manufacturers/ First Party Publishers: https://goo.gl/jx5S1x
Nintendo: https://goo.gl/phSzuy
Will sales: https://goo.gl/JVqSyF
Sega : https://goo.gl/bDEKOD
Love for DreamCast : https://goo.gl/RtSrNy
Distribution and Retail
The mainstream retailing of video games began in 1970's, after the commercial sucess of pong. After a competition between companies trying to make their own consoles Atari came out on top and is remembered as one of the first console manufacturer, with their Atari 2600, young game developers began to produce and sell games for the system effectiveley giving birth to video game retailing bussnesses. The distribution of video games can be separated into two main fields, online (steam, gog and others) and retailers (electronic & gaming stores).
Online shopping is becoming more and more common place with people claiming that retailers will be gone in the next 10 years, and its easy to see why. Not only does online distribution offer a quick and easy way to purchase games and play them on the spot but with Steam or GOG you constantly find great deals and sales that you'll never see in stores.
Video game retailing was the first mainstream way of purchasing video games, as the popularity of video games increased more business based solely on selling video games began to pop up, GAME, GameStop and others. Though online distribution has become so popular and the future of purchasing physical copies of a game seems bleak there is still chance that these stores wont go bankrupt yet.
Sources-
Retail Distribution : https://goo.gl/X4aqdE
Digital Distribution : https://goo.gl/Nhj1MB
Outsourcing Companies
Outsourcing companies are companies that are payed to do work for a company, for example if a company requires music tracks and they don't have the time and money to hire a musician they would pay an outsourcing company to create music for them. This has its flaws like the work done not fitting into the style of the rest of the game and other issues that would arise in such a situation.
A company that handles outsourcing well is Virtuos, not only do they have experience of many genres and demographics but they also work with AAA game developers like Ubisoft and Konami. They have over 1000 high quality members of staff with plenty of experience in the gaming world. A high quality company like this proves that outsourcing can work in the gaming industry.
Sources-
Outsourcing Companies : https://goo.gl/9xOv0w
Virtuos : https://goo.gl/FjduUw
Good Outsourcing : https://goo.gl/4w1g6C
Press and Media
The gaming press is centered around the newest games and consoles, early examples of gaming media would be old magazines like Nintendo Power or newer websites like Gamespress. Video game journalism can be benefitial to a company as it can help with promotion, on the other hand having a biassed and self centered critic unfairly bashing a game because of his personal tastes was common with magazines and is still fairly common to this day.
A bad example of game journaling is Nintendo Power, while a well made and entertaining magazine it's game reviews were less than stellar, it had many problems with reviewers seemingly not knowing much about gaming, from giving horrible games a good score to odd and questionable game descriptions that make you wonder if the writer even played the game.
A much better example of game reviewing would be the more modern review websites, places dedicated for people who want to express their likes and dislikes, recommend a great game or warn people of horrible games. this system works much better as the reviews are bountiful and come from a gamer, not a journalist.
Sources-
Press and Media : https://goo.gl/OeKaKc
Nintendo Power : https://goo.gl/tXRUIt
Game review website : https://goo.gl/QT4du0
