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What's in a Name: 2D Boy

david hinkle
Associate Editor
Updated ·2 min read

It's time for another origin story of an industry presence. Today, Kyle Gabler explains how he and partner Ron Carmel came up with their studio name, 2D Boy, using the process of elimination:

Ron and I bummed around for a few weeks throwing names back and forth. They were all either awful, a sexual euphemism or their domain was being squatted on. Some examples for you:

  • "Funk Button": We thought that sounded pretty great! And in every game, we could have a "Funk button," where when you press it, all the characters drop everything and dance! But then we looked it up on Urban Dictionary. I recommend everyone search Urban Dictionary before naming their game/studio/baby/etc.

  • "Power of 2": because we are two guys with powerful muscles. Unfortunately this was also the name of a Christian rock band. And a year or so later, another game related business named itself the same thing.

  • "Big Kitty," "Milky Dolphin" and "Sassy Weasel": Basically, every possible combination of words in the form of "adjective plus animal" was already taken as a game studio in Australia or somewhere. There's even a group actually called Adjective Animal.

  • "Huge," "Massive" and "Enormous": Every possible synonym of the word "big" is already a game studio. We're an industry of confidence.

"2D Boy!" We liked that it was short, it immediately conjured up an awkward little 2D kid lost in a 3D world as a mascot, and it was not big or powerful or assuming in any way. And the 5-character domain was actually available. For a while, people (like our bank in San Francisco and my dad) thought this was some sort of gay porn business. But after we made World of Goo, that showed them!

2D Boy's World of Goo is currently available on WiiWare, PC, Mac and iPad.

Like this feature? Be sure to check out the What's In A Name Archives.