| Nautilus said: Kingdom Battle is, by definition, a second party game. |
Sorry to butt in here, and I may be wrong, but I don't think there really is a "definition" of what "second party" means in this regard.
Typically, the term has been used to describe a studio where a majority stake is owned by a certain publisher. This often let's the publisher tell the studio what to do (to a certain degree) and where to publish their games. Yet the studio remains essentially self-managed, and typically has rights in place to either buy shares back, or negotiate a complete buy-out deal with a different party altogether.
This is what happened with RARE, for instance. Majority (but not dominant) stake held by Nintendo for many years, but they had the right to negotiate the deal with Microsoft for a full purchase of the studio. Many studios are in similar constellations with Nintendo or other publishers.
I do not remember seeing a game production by itself be called "second party," when the parent company is entirely separate from Nintendo, but maybe I'm just old.
