What do video game publishers do

what do video game publishers do

They publish games, retard.

they probably also publish music

guy on the left kinda looks like mclovin

Ride of the successes of others

They handle advertising and distribution, as opposed to development and playtesting.

This.

They usually also front the money, since the game studios themselves generally don't have enough capital to finance a whole development process themselves.

This is necessary moreso with videogames than other software because games are developed as one big release; whereas with normal software a small version is developed first, and then more and more features are added with each release, with customer base and revenue growing as the cost to maintain and grow the software increases.

>They handle advertising and distribution, as opposed to development and playtesting.
And cucking, don't forget that.
They interfere with development processes to ensure that things are sufficiently shit not to accidentally amaze too many people and make other projects look bad.

They set deadlines to rush project release either during or before important things like competitor releases or national retail festivals.

OTOH: They sometimes also keep a lid on developer wank and make the auteurs knock their shit off so shit gets released one day and is actually playable.

You could make a big list of games that were sabotaged by publishers or that were fucked up by developers and could have been saved by publishers stepping in.

HL3 would be released by now if Valve had an external publisher.
Daikatana might have been on time and actually good if the publisher grew some ovaries and didn't suck Romero's cock.

Pretty much fucking nothing

Most of the time, the publishers are the ones funding the development. Studios don't usually have the money to run themselves until the game is released.

Even if they did, they'd need a lot more than the money for one game because if it flopped, they'd be finished.

Sweet Christ, that thickness!

Usually, they're the equivalent of movie producers. They basically fund the game and it's development, which means they have a right (and the rights to the IP btw) to some input, whether good or bad. They're also in charge of printing the discs, marketing and release. Think of developers as construction contractors. They don't have enough capital to develop and market an entire project, so they work for publishers instead.

Knowing this, it becomes pretty fucking apparent how ignorant people are when they say, for example, that FROM should have made Bloodborne multiplat.

How many games would a game publisher publish if a game publisher could publish games?

That's basically how vidya works these days with all the DLC and episodic faggotry.

No way

>ttw wearing a suit at work is frowned upon
I wish I was a nip ;_;

force developers to copycat previous hits
create scheme preventing proper reviews
minimize salaries of anyone below them

they fund development and then manage sales

wow that street is really clean

They place a flat rate order, following technical specifications and schedule for a software using.

...

nah more like asian joseph gordon levitt