General Q 2: Whats the difference between developers and publishers?
The quick answer is really simple: developers create the games, publishers do everything else to get the game into a store (box creation, marketing, sales, PR, etc.). But of course, there is a longer answer. The largest companies you may have heard of, such as EA (Electronic Arts), are publishers but they also have development teams that they own – so they are developers too. They are also big enough that they can be the publisher for development studios that they don’t own. These deals have tremendous variation; there are times when the publisher will help pay for the development of the game too, and then has some say over what goes into the game. Other times, the deal is structured so that the publisher is not paying for development and therefore does not have a say in how the game will be created. This all depends on the situation with the independent developer and how much financing they have on their own.
