Developing and Publishing games and the reasons why

[treismac]

Generally speaking, what are the reasons why a company will develop but not publish a game and vice versa (particularly in the 16 and pre-16-bit era)? I have some ideas, but I'd like to hear the input from the community.

I assume more capital was needed back in the day for publishing rather than developing a game, so a small company like Technos could publish their games like Double Dragon until they had more success. For non-indie games, I reckon this doesn't hold true anymore, but I'm not sure.

I'm also assuming that big companies that both develop and manufacture games (i.e. Nintendo, Konami, and Capcom) get another company to develop a game for the following reasons:

1) Sometimes a video game company wants a certain type of game made that a certain studio would be better suited for creating than them.

2) There is a relationship/contract between certain developers and publishers (i.e. Nintendo and Rare).

3) It is more economically viable to subcontract out the occasional game than to keep more game designers on staff all the time.

I'm sure there are holes in some of my speculations as well as things I'm missing, but that is the best I can come up with at the moment.

[jb143]

A big part is that game designers just want to design and make games and then leave the manufacturing and marketing side to someone else.

[theclaw]

Sometimes small company attempts to become a publisher, don't always pan out.

Rare was beginning to try that (Perfect Dark, Conker, etc). Their Nintendo partnership at its peak gave them enough clout. Until the deal fell apart so bad.

Marvelous (Avalon Code), Yuke's (Neverland Card Battles), and probably others made similar brief efforts.

[goatdan]

Even now, this is due to the same reasons that it was back then.

If you don't publish games a lot, you don't have the resources to distribute and promote those games that a publisher would. It isn't like you can just manufacture a game and then it magically appears on store shelves and in magazines and stuff like that. That takes resources.

It also allows you to get capital up front often. A lot of publishers will write a contract where they pay the development studio a certain amount of money for benchmarks, or time put in, or whatever. Even in the days where a one person "team" could make a game in a few months, during that time you need to eat and whatnot, and then you would need to find a *lot* of money to produce your game. Most banks won't just loan you a quarter million dollars to produce an unproven product with no track record.

Developers then get royalties off each game sold. This usually helps fund them until their next game is far enough along for them to ink another production deal.

For producers, while you are laying out cash, you're ensuring yourself a steady stream of products that your PR people can promote, and your distribution people can sell to distributors. It's far less risky to not own the studios, as if a game doesn't sell very well, and there aren't enough royalties to keep the studio afloat, you aren't stuck holding a studio that is now definitely losing money.

Add all these things together, and unless you are big enough to support your own development and publishing wing together, one where you have enough developers to keep your own publishers busy, it definitely makes more sense for all sides for things to operate like this.