The video game industry has a long list of terms to define the concepts and a part of them is focused on tracing the differences between who develops the titles.
That is why we usually talk about triple A and indie games, on the one hand, but also about first, second and third parties. Each of these depending on the study that was in charge of the creation and who belongs to that group of developers.
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Differences between triple A games and indies
This is the most general and easiest division to understand, because it can be compared to what happens in the film industry. The basis of the difference between the two terms is in the capital that each study has.
The triple-A games They are those that come from large developers, who have million-dollar incomes and a large employee base. For example, GTA V It is a video game of this type because its owners are Rockstar Gamesstudy belonging to Take Two Interactiveone of the largest companies in this market, which also owns 2Kcompany creator of NBA 2K.
While indie or independent games are those that come from very small studios, almost always when they are starting in the industry and have few employees, even in some cases a single person is the one who creates the entire game as it happened with Undertale, Spelunky, Fez and Stardew Valleygreat indies in history.
This division does not affect the quality of the game. In fact, in the last decade, the advancement of video game development tools has allowed indie studios to deliver great jewels, which over time become historical titles such as the case of Minecraftwhich is one of the best-selling games and Microsoft bought from the company that created it, Mojangfor 2,500 million dollars in 2014.
The growth of independent developers has led experts to create a second category: double A games. It is a middle ground in which a study does not have the millionaire capital of a company like Electronic Artsfor example, but it has grown large enough to have a base of 50 or 70 employees and has already released several games that give it recognition.
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Differences between first, second and third party games
Here the capital is set aside and the division is made depending on the consoles. There are three dominant brands on the market: Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo. Each one not only has hardware, but also a wide variety of companies under its domain that create games.
-First party: They are the titles developed by companies owned by the owners of the consoles. For example, The Last of Us I believe it Naughty Dogwhich is a study belonging to playstation studios.
-Second party: games created by companies that do not belong to the consoles, but that have received money from them and release titles that are exclusive to those platforms. An example is Pokemon, that belongs to Game Freak that publishes only for Nintendo but these are not their owners.
-Third party: titles developed by third parties, which normally release their creations on various consoles, although there are cases of exclusive games made by an external studio for a single platform. Some examples in these cases are Assassin’s Creed from ubisfot or FIFA by Electronic Arts.
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