I asked GameDiscoverCo founder Simon Carless
Talking about names, that is a very Unamerican family name.
I asked GameDiscoverCo founder Simon Carless
Talking about names, that is a very Unamerican family name.
FALL.
Duskfade is a perfectly pleasant 3D platformer with Kingdom Hearts-style combat that came out a couple of months ago. Once I've finished typing this paragraph, however, it will once again erase itself from my memory, because there's nothing evocative about the name.
I feel that says more about the game than the name. Like I find (scrolls through Steam library) Bullet Witch is a more memorable name than say Portal, but I can tell you a hell of a lot more about the latter.
"Beyond that—I actually think that naming isn't that important, since most people buy a game based on video footage, someone else playing it, or a recommendation. And we've seen in music and elsewhere that weird names are in no way a blocker to becoming successful." Carless cites Steely Dan and Bananarama as examples.
Do people really look at the videos on Steam? I always immediately click past them to look at the images.
Failbetter's next game is called Mandrake—the result of lots of collaborative longlisting, Flynn says. As well as encapsulating horticultural and sorcerer-type themes, it's the name of the game's main character.
This would be like if Esoteric Ebb called itself 'Cleric', though given Wizards of the Coast is publishing a game called 'Warlock: Dungeon & Dragons' I suppose it wouldn't be that out there.
Good article though.
Horizon : Zero Dawn is a terrible title. Zero Dawn is only marginally better.
Because now you can build it into a franchise. Intergalactic: <INSERT_TITLE>
Yeah, but Flynn's suggestion (and I'd very much agree) is to save that for the sequel. You'll get a much more memorable title for your first entry, and then you can market off of that. If I might retroactively ruin a few other series that way:
Player Unknown's Battlegrounds Battlegrounds is such a weird case. The name was stupid to begin with, everyone ended up just calling it PUBG. Then they rebranded to PUBG being the company name and the game name, but then slapped Battlegrounds back on the end anyway?!
Pokemon also started out as Pocket Monsters in the original Japanese release. When it came to release outside Japan, there was trademark issues and they had to find an alternative name... ended up with Pokemon. Later they rebranded the game in Japan too. Someone correct me if I'm wrong here.
I'd rather have numbered titles in the series so that I don't have to memorize the order.
Wild Hearts and Sayonara Wild Hearts are not in the same series. Tales of Zau is not a part of the Tales of Series. Just look at how many games are Z something or something Z.
Why bother with reinventing the title wheel when you can just hope that you'll have a subset of buyers that purchase expecting a different level of quality?
Horizon: Zero Dawn should have just been called Zero Dawn.
It should have been "Horizon." That's the game's series title. And since it was the first one, it didn't need a subtitle at all.
Also, in the first paragraph it seems like the author is confused by words that are just a bit similar and not even the same since they are mixing together games with "dusk" in the title and games with "dust" in the title.
Zero Dawn was a thing in the game's back story that explained how everything came to be. Horizon was a throwaway word in a monologue toward the end of the game, and they probably also risked brand trouble with Forza: Horizon, which predated it. That's my case anyway. "Horizon" seemed a bad fit for that game's title.
Fair. And also, naming things is hard. I am numb to it by now; video games have always tended to have goofy, nonsense, or boring names. Tho, back in the day, we just assumed it was a translation thing considering a vast majority of the popular games in my youth were made by Japanese developers.
"Metal Gear Solid, huh? That's certainly a name."
Duskbloods is the new FromSoftware game, so there's no chance anyone will forget that.
Oof, I had already forgotten it before they mentioned FromSoftware. It sounds like a teenage vampire drama...
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