A publisher is by nature led to entrust everything that is not within the range of its skills to a network of subcontractors: developers, test-players, designers, printers, various manufacturers … So what publishers actually do?
Stage one: a study of the author’s proposition. Gigamic receives 400 a year, and a first selection determines which mock-ups will undergo an in-depth internal test…

After a second selection, a new test is usually outsourced, in order to overcome in-house errors of judgement! This third stage determines whether or not prototypes will be created. This entails a detailed manufacturing study, as the product’s physical definition must be linked to its cots price: It would be quite useless to design components that would be too expensive to mass produce. Design therefore takes place within the industrialization project, a phase that often means months of work with no true outcome, due to insolvable technical or financial problems. Then the happy winner is finally selected, its copyright registered its brand name chosen and registered, its packaging studied. An initial pre-series is manufactured to be presented on the January trade fairs, before final production is launched.
The entire process can take from a few weeks to … several years. Elevation, published on a small scale by its creator, became Pyraos (then Pylos) in less than 10 weeks, but after a drastic change of the initial presentation…
Alongside these “births”, some extensive studies remain sterile simply because of selection.
Studying, analysing, financing and choosing, that is a publisher’s true business, and this naturally takes place before going on to all the marketing aspects. For after producing, the main job still remains to be done: seduce the retailers and the players!