The release of Insomniac Games' new title Song of the Deep (more details here) is going to be an experiment for the developer. Instead of being released through a traditional publisher, Insomniac has teamed with GameStop for what Ted Price, the company's founder, calls a "non-traditional developer-publisher relationship."

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Song of the Deep Screenshots 5 IMAGES

Song of the Deep Concept Art 5 IMAGES

While GameStop has no creative control over the new game, the company is handling Song of the Deep's promotion and marketing. When Song of the Deep is released in Q2 of this year, it will be available for digital download on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC, but a physical disc will only be available for purchase in GameStop stores."Insomniac owns the intellectual property. We have full creative control over what the game is and how it's being developed, and GameStop has been incredibly collaborative and supportive of everything we're doing," Price said during a recent visit to Insomniac's headquarters in Burbank, Calif.The partnership built out of a conversation between Price and GameStop's Mark Stanley. The two met at Insomniac's Burbank offices, where Price told Stanley about the idea for Song of the Deep. Stanley and the GameStop team were excited about Song of the Deep's story, visuals and mechanics and, in an opportunity to find a new way to reach their audience, set out to help Insomniac release the game."We've all noticed a resurgence of indie titles over the years, and what's awesome about that is that the smaller titles tend to take more creative risks and deliver something that's very different than, say, the AAA, more realistic titles. For us as a company that thrives on creativity and loves building new worlds, that's a place we love to be as well," Price said. "When Mark and I were talking about how the market's evolving and looking ahead and bringing more to players, we started connecting on that particular topic, and we were serendipitously working on a pitch for Song of the Deep, and sparks ignited."Stanley explained of GameStop's decision-making, "We have 62 million customers coming to our doors every year. How do we give more and more content and more exclusives and different kinds of games in our store, beyond just the traditional AAA, etc? We've worked for many years with publishers on exclusives in our stores, etc. This is a different way to bring added value to those customers. We think it's a very good balance to maintain."The appeal for Insomniac was the opportunity to use the reach of the company to put Song of the Deep on a platform that would allow more consumers to see the smaller title. By releasing it through GameStop, Song of the Deep will be treated to the full AAA launch experience.Beyond just the physical disc, GameStop locations will sell tie-in toys, PopVinyls and other Song of the Deep merchandise. Additionally, Insomniac partnered with Sterling Publishing, whose parent company is Barnes & Noble, to create a chapter book that will be coming out at the same time as Song of the Deep and be targeted at children ages 8 to 12. The book will follow the story of Merryn's journey and elaborate on some of the game's to serve as a compliment to the title.For Insomniac, the idea behind this approach was "how do we approach the IP in a non-traditional way?" Though the multi-medium launch wasn't something the Insomniac team had initially thought about, they liked the appeal of having Song of the Deep's release feel like an event. Price noted, "Today, people want more from their games."Stanley said GameStop learned a lot from the experience, particularly as a "collaborative process where artists do their job" and their company as a publisher acts as support for promotion and marketing. That way, he said, GameStop is letting "art flourish on its own.""The collaboration has felt very natural along the way," he said. "We're really working every step of the way collaboratively by bringing in all the areas of GameStop -- marketing teams, promotional teams -- letting them come in and allow the Insomniac team to actually really focus on the game itself and making it everything they dreamt of it being."Of whether GameStop would be looking to create publishing partnerships to release other games, Stanley didn't answer directly. Instead he said the company would see how the full Song of the Deep experience played out before determining what next steps could be."This is the project we're completely focused on right now. It's the first time we're doing this. There's been a lot of learnings along the way, and I think there's still a lot of learnings to be had. Based on this, we'll obviously consider all options," he said. "I think one of our focus points and one of the reasons why we dove into this project is part of my role is to look at different ways of expanding our business and bringing more value to our customers.""Once we get this project to market, we'll look back and see should we keep doing this, what could we be doing differently," Stanley continued. "Maybe there will be more opportunities in the future."

Terri Schwartz is Entertainment Editor at IGN. Follow her on Twitter at @Terri_Schwartz