CaptainExplosion said:
Like how most characters in the Donkey Kong Country trilogy were created by Rare but owned by Nintendo? |
In effect, yes. There is nothing wrong with saying "second party" because people generally know what you mean but there is no true weight or significance to it. Bloodborne was created and developed by From Software, so people call it "second party", but it's owned by Sony, the publisher, which makes it a first party work.
Same is true relative to the studio. It's either independent from the publisher or it's not, so it's either a first party studio or a third party studio.
Though, really, all these phrases are relative to the system we're talking about at the time and can be changed around depending on perspective, so it's not really a big deal. They're just representative terms. For example, in a classic business model, gamers (the customers) would actually be the "second party," the sellers (publisher) would be the "first party," and any outside sources (independent developers) would constitute the "third party."
