Publisher

In the next 3 blog posts I will be writing about the Games Industry, including posts about Publishers, Developers and Indie Publishers.

Video Games publishers are companies that publish video games which have either been developed by a video game developer or have been developed internally. As well as book publishers or DVD publishers, video game publishers are basically responsible for their products's manufacturing and marketing, which would include market research and all the aspects of advertising.

They would usually provide finance for the development team, sometimes by paying a video game developer and sometimes by paying an internal staff of developers called a studio. The larger games publishers would also distribute the games which they publish, whereas some smaller publishers would instead hire companies to distribute some of the games they publish.

Some other functions usually include deciding on paying for any license that the game may utilize; paying for layout, printing and possibly writing of the user manual also the creation of graphic design elements, which could include the box design.

Activision was originally created in California in 1979 and was recreated in Delaware in December 1992. With the current organisational structure, it operates under three segments: Activision Publishing Inc, Blizzard Entertainment Inc and Activision Blizzard Distribution. Activision develops and publishes games on various consoles, handheld platforms and PC platforms.  Through Blizzard Entertainment Inc they are the leader in terms of subscriber base and revenues generated in the subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game category such as World of Warcraft. 

Activision had a relationship with a popular games studio Bungie. They also owned some of their own studios, and some of them are: FreeStyle Games which is a British development company with roughly around 100 staff which is based in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. The company was originally formed by ex-Codemasters and ex-Rare staff in the late 2002, and has developed over the last 5 years into a well respected development company.

Activision also made a deal with Sega to publish US releases of Pc versions of some other games titles, such as Sonic Adventure DX: Directors Cut.

But most notably of all the games Activision have published the one that really stands out was the hugely popular first-person shooter that is the high selling franchise which is the Call of duty series. After Infinity Ward originally created the first Call of Duty, originally Activision helped fund Infinity Ward in its early days, buying 30 percent of the company. After they were funded, Infinity Ward released their first game which was a World War 2 shooter called Call of Duty, literally a day the day after the game was released, Activision also secured the rest of Infinity Ward, signing employees to long term contracts. Infinity Ward then went on to make Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Activision’s target market varies as it releases different types of games, this would range from Skylanders which is specifically aimed at children with an age bracket of 3+ to around 12 years of age, this varies massively to another game they published which was Call of Duty which was specifically aimed at an audience of 18+ due to its strong, violent and at times graphic scenes.