whats-in-a-name
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What's in a name? WoW study explores the answer
Do your characters' names change depending on the race or class you're playing, or do they reflect your play-style as a whole? A recent article at Gamasutra by games analyst Anders Drachen explores the patterns that emerge when studying names in games. Speculating that patterns in naming exist, Drachen and colleagues studied millions of World of Warcraft character data and found a relationship between the name selection and the class and race of a character; the most popular names had virtually no overlap between classes and races. It was also discovered that unique names in the game existed at a higher frequency than in the real world. The researches found that an average of 58% of the names overall were unique and that 83% of names were unique on RP servers. Additionally, names with negative connotations were six times more common than positive ones. Taking the study beyond WoW, the researchers looked at shooters and found "hints that it may be possible to predict some aspects of play behavior or perhaps even personality of people based on their character names."
What's in a Name: Red Barrels
David Chateauneuf and Philippe Morin are both ex-Ubisoft guys who always wanted to make a horror game but couldn't while employed by the French publisher. Now the two have struck out on their own to form Red Barrels, an independent studio currently working on the Unreal-powered Outlast. We asked them how they could possibly come up with such an original name as Red Barrels."Actually, coming up with the name was one of the hardest things. Doing the trailer was pretty easy and straightforward, but agreeing upon the name was harder than we expected. We had to do lists and votes and stuff like that. Eventually it just came down to what everybody was cool with. And also I guess we thought that it would give us an opportunity to do something cool visually. So it was basically going through a list, voting and what everyone felt comfortable with, we went with that."In response to that, I asked if Red Barrels was a democratic studio – a decision by committee kind of outfit."We have a pretty flat structure – I wouldn't say it's democratic, but pretty close to it." Outlast is launching sometime in 2013 on PC (Steam) through an agreement with Valve. Like this feature? Be sure to check out the What's in a Name Archives.
What's in a Name: Bungie Aerospace
Bernard Yee is the Aerospace Portfolio Manager for Bungie, tasked with helping the newly independent studio expand into digitally distributed frontiers. He's previously worked on everything from EverQuest at Sony Online Entertainment to Rock Band at Harmonix. The name came about a couple ways: There are a bunch of real space industry fans at Bungie; like when the shuttle launch happened, a bunch of people from the studio went down to Florida to watch it. So there's a bunch of aerospace engineering fans at the studio and I think the name came about partially from that. There's an expression in Latin, and I forget what it is in Latin, but it's "to boldly go into the stars" [Ed: "per audacia ad astra"] and I think that saying sort of personified Bungie's feeling of being independent again. We could be cross-platform, we weren't tied to any specific console device anymore, we're getting to do something new with a big IP. And as specifically applied to Bungie Aerospace, the idea that there were a whole host of platforms like iOS and Android and PC/Steam and to a similar degree XBLA and PSN; that there were different game experiences being developed there. It's almost like the mammals underfoot the dinosaurs, something interesting was happening. Bungie is a very technically capable studio and we clearly see the trajectory of these hardware devices. We understand the things that make Bungie a great game studio on console were going to be increasingly relevant in this space, with iOS devices. But it wasn't 100% transferable, right? The lessons we learned on console will be useful on the mobile platform but they're going to be different game experiences. Maybe the game sessions are 20 minutes instead of two hours. I think I remember reading that Torchlight's average game session was about 20 or 30 minutes. I would guess that Halo or Call of Duty's average is much longer. The idea is that we want to understand this platform because it's relevant to us as game creators and there's a lot to learn. We wanted to do this as a way to grow Bungie's expertise and reach into other areas. That's where the Aerospace name came from. Bungie Aerospace recently released its first title, Crimson: Steam Pirates, from developer Harebrained Schemes. It's available for iPad from the iOS App Store. Like this feature? Be sure to check out the What's in a Name Archives.
What's in a Name: Gaikai
David Perry, Co-Founder and CEO of Gaikai, sat down with us during last week's Game Developers Conference: Online in Austin, TX. Over the howl of the expo floor's contemporary rock soundtrack, David let us in on Gaikai's mysterious branding: "Basically one of our founders, his name is Rui Pereira, he came up with this name 'Gaikai,' and I said, 'Oh my God, no one will ever be able to pronounce that, no one will ever be able to spell that, this is a bad idea.' And of course, there's all the following conversations, what about all the other strange words that are out there: The Googles, and the Kodaks, and the, you know, the Xeroxes? "There's all these strange things that are out there, so what's wrong with having a strange name? I then took a marketing class in Texas, and they explained the idea of 'mystique marketing;' it's actually cool to have a hard-to-say name, because it means if you know how to pronounce it, then you're in the club. "So any time you hear Gaikai pronounced wrong, you can go 'Hrm, this guy doesn't know what it means, or how to say it even.' That's mystique marketing, so I thought, 'Huh, maybe we give this a try.' "It turns that the actual word is a Japanese word, and it means 'a large open space,' like out on the open ocean, and if you look around on the open ocean, you can go in any direction. And that's what we believe cloud gaming enables." Gaikai is a technology company that provides streaming game middleware to third-party corporations such as Walmart. Like this feature? Be sure to check out the What's In A Name Archives.
What's In A Name: Dancing Dots Studio
Martial Hesse-Dréville, Dancing Dots Studio's managing director, explains how his studio came up with its energetic name. No, they're not fans of Dancing with the Stars -- turns out, the explanation is much more straightforward than that! "I named Dancing Dots just for the fact that what we do, at the core, is making pixels move. Moving pixels then lead me to think of dancing dots. It's a catchy title and playing a game is about having fun, something that dancing is too. Dancing expresses that something is fun." Dancing Dots Studio is currently working on Rotastic, due out on Xbox Live Arcade on September 21. The PSN launch is currently slated for January. Like this feature? Be sure to check out the What's In A Name Archives.
What's in a Name: Thekla, Inc.
Thekla, Inc.'s Jonathan Blow, creative lead of Braid and upcoming game The Witness, revealed the following Italo Calvino quote, from the book "Invisible Cities," as the origin behind his new dev studio's name. "Those who arrive at Thekla can see little of the city, beyond the plank fences, the sackcloth screens, the scaffoldings, the metal armatures, the wooden catwalks hanging from ropes or supported by sawhorses, the ladders, the trestles. If you ask 'Why is Thekla's construction taking such a long time?' the inhabitants continue hoisting sacks, lowering leaded strings, moving long brushes up and down, as they answer 'So that it's destruction cannot begin.' And if asked whether they fear that, once the scaffoldings are removed, the city may begin to crumble and fall to pieces, they add hastily, in a whisper, 'Not only the city.' If, dissatisfied with the answers, someone puts his eye to a crack in a fence, he sees cranes pulling up other cranes, scaffoldings that embrace other scaffoldings, beams that prop up other beams. 'What meaning does your construction have?' he asks. 'What is the aim of a city under construction unless it is a city? Where is the plan you are following, the blueprint?' 'We will show it to you as soon as the working day is over; we cannot interrupt our work now,' they answer. Work stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars. 'There is the blueprint,' they say." - Italo Calvino, "Invisible Cities"
What's in a Name: Toys for Bob
Toys for Bob's Paul Reiche III, co-creator of the Star Control series and Pandemonium, lets us in on the thinking behind his studio's name. Whenever you're putting together a studio, right, it's like name, t-shirt, and then let's do the contract. So Fred [Ford] and I had formed a partnership to do Star Control 1. And we had all of these different names laid out, including this Bosco the Bee mascot that didn't work out. And finally my wife -- she's a poet, very interested in psychology -- she said create a name that generates interest, that doesn't distance yourself from people, and that you can reinvent. I love toys, I always have, and she knows that and Fred knows that. And so it was just a perfect fit. Bob is also a universal name -- everyone knows a Bob, I used to listen to the Bill Cosby and he was always talking about Bob the mechanic. And part of my brain is just permanently Bob. We have an official rule, which is that everyone gets their own Bob, whoever you want. "Toys for Bob Kotick" is a fairly good analogy for us, since he's paid for everything we've done. But I'm a sort of a Church of the SubGenius guy myself. Toys for Bob is currently working on Activision's Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure, due out later on this year. Like this feature? Be sure to check out the What's In A Name Archives.
What's in a Name: LightBox Interactive
While a raucous Starhawk multiplayer session went on in the front two rows of Austin's Alamo Drafthouse theater, LightBox Interactive creative director Lars DeVore spoke to Joystiq about the high concept behind the name of the studio formed by Incognito expats. We sat around and we did the whole list of names. What it comes down to is that the "lightbox" itself is the idea of restrained energy. We felt like we were at a point as a studio where we were boxed in, and we wanted to be able to explode that box, and to express this energy, these ideas, and this creativity openly. We wanted to be able to bust out. Get that feeling out there. LightBox Interactive is working on Starhawk, a PS3 exclusive coming out in early 2012. Like this feature? Be sure to check out the What's In A Name Archives.
What's In A Name: Beenox
Dee Brown, Studio Head at Spider-Man: Edge of Time developer Beenox, gave us the origin story of the Quebec-based studio's name. Were any radioactive spills or gamma rays involved? "When I was in high school, I was already thinking about creating my own games and starting my own development studio and I was already writing programs that I would publish on the internet. I was always using my real name at the time and everyone else was using a label or a comic hero name or something else. "I was in a chemistry course one day and I was really bored, so I started thinking about my future game company. I was writing stuff in my book and I thought of a bunch of names but, for some reason, I really wanted an 'X' in my name. So I was writing a whole bunch of names with an X in them and eventually I wrote 'Beenox.' "I thought to myself, 'That kinda sounds cool' so I kept it and started using it. I then incorporated the name and started googling and found it was free; it was available." Beenox is currently working on Spider-Man: Edge of Time, which is slated to launch on Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, DS and 3DS. Like this feature? Be sure to check out the What's In A Name Archives.
What's in a Name: Arrowhead Game Studios
Johan Pilestedt is CEO of Arrowhead Game Studios, the Swedish developer responsible for Magicka. He recently revealed to us the origin of the studio's name and the meaning behind its seemingly dim-witted mascot. Originally, when the studio was just a "student project," the group called themselves Team Arrowhead. "Arrowhead" was a play on Pilestedt's name, which, in English, means "arrow stead." "But wait, there's more to this story!" says Pilestedt.
What's in a Name: EA2D
Mark Spenner is the vice president and general manager of Electronic Arts' EA2D studio, which makes smaller games with smaller teams. It's just launched Dragon Age Legends on Facebook and is working on an XBLA/PSN version of the Flash hit The Fancy Pants Adventures. Spenner elucidated the meaning of the studio's name in a conversation with Joystiq at South by Southwest Interactive: "A lot of people think 'EA2D' is about graphics, because obviously the '2D,' but the inspiration was: We wanted to get back to small teams, core gameplay. We had this manifesto at EA when it was founded, all about that -- and about making people cry through video games. So very player-focused; 'back to our roots' gameplay; and then not worry so much about the number of pixels we're pushing onto the screen. "So that was the genesis of the name, and then some fabulous people at EA did this logo for us, which captured the spirit perfectly." Dragon Age Legends is playable on Facebook. Fancy Pants Adventures is due on XBLA and PSN this spring. Like this feature? Be sure to check out the What's In A Name Archives.
What's in a Name: Demiurge Studios
Albert Reed is the studio director and co-founder of Demiurge Studios, the Boston-based team responsible for the forthcoming Shoot Many Robots and a mess of contract work with Harmonix' Rock Band franchise, Gearbox Studios' Brothers in Arms and Borderlands franchises, and many more. Reed discussed the origin of his studio's name during an interview with us at GDC: "Late night with a thesaurus searching for words that mean 'creativity' and 'innovation.' So the demiurge was -- there's a bunch of different interpretations of it, some of which are sort of ... mean to religions. I don't know. But the one that we originated from was the Greek philosopher Plato needed -- there was no one in the Greek pantheon of Gods who sort of created the Earth, there wasn't much of a creation myth there. So the demiurge was sort of responsible for forming the material world. So the Earth and trees and all that stuff, right? And so since we make worlds inside of video games, that seemed appropriate." Shoot Many Robots is being planned for digital launch later this year on consoles, and currently has no publisher. Like this feature? Be sure to check out the What's In A Name Archives.
What's in a Name: Chair Entertainment
Donald Mustard is the creative director and co-founder of Chair Entertainment, the Salt Lake City-based team responsible for 2009's Xbox Live Arcade hit Shadow Complex and last year's iOS hit Infinity Blade. He discussed the origin of his studio's during a panel at GDC: "The idea of 'Chair' comes from Plato's theory of forms. You guys all remember your Philosophy 101 class from university? Plato theorizes that everything exists in a perfect state, in some metaphysical state, and everything else is just an emulation of that metaphysical perfection. And he uses the example of a chair. "All of you are now sitting on a chair but if you look around through GDC, you'll see lots of different chairs that look different but all follow the same function. [Plato] postulates that all those chairs are all trying to become the perfect chair that is kind of out there, somewhere. "And we thought that was actually an applicable concept to game design. Because when we sit around and talk about games, or think about them in our head first, we think, 'Oh man it would be so awesome if this game was like this, or like this, or like that.' And then in our head, it's this perfect thing. And then we have to go through the process of actually making that game and it's never -- at least in my experience -- it's never as perfect as what we first envisioned in our heads. "So 'Chair' to us means the pursuit of perfection. It's trying to actually get to that ideal image that was first in our head when we thought about it." Infinity Blade is available -- and still being updated -- on the iTunes App Store as a universal app, compatible with both iPhone and iPad, for $5.99. Like this feature? Be sure to check out the What's In A Name Archives.
What's in a Name: Uber Entertainment
Bob Berry is the CEO of Uber Entertainment, which launched its debut title, Monday Night Combat, on Xbox Live Arcade last August. Here's his story on the origin of his studio's name: "At least since the late 90s the term 'uber' has been thrown around in online gaming communities. It's always meant 'powerful,' 'over-powered,' or just 'awesome.' It so happens that I was playing a good deal of Team Fortress 2 in the fall of 2007 when Uber Entertainment was conceived. 'Uber' was the perfect word to reflect many aspects of our business. It spoke to the kinds of games we would make, the fans we would connect with, and it would embody our general philosophy of hiring great people. The goal was to create a company that was indeed 'Uber.' "The company was born of a desire to make games differently. A fundamental part of this philosophy is our 'whiteboxing' process (there are many terms for it), whereby we create our core gameplay and do the majority of our iteration with placeholder art assets. The core team that was assembled shared the same philosophy and vision for making games. One such person was our art director Chandana 'Eka' Ekanayake, who took it upon himself to embody this philosophy in our company logo. The abstract man holding up the giant white box in an Atlas-like pose represents both our development philosophy and the Uber nature of the people that are the company." Uber's Monday Night Combat is currently available from the Xbox Live Marketplace for $15. Like this feature? Be sure to check out the What's In A Name Archives.
What's in a Name: PopCap Games
During another long night of shakes and sweats, suffering from what was surely some PopCap Games withdrawal, we pondered the origin story of the electronic pharmaceutical giant's name. We spoke with PopCap Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer Jason Kapalka for the answer: "First thing is that [PopCap Games] wasn't our name originally. The original name was 'Sexy Action Cool,'" Kapalka told us. "Back at university in Edmonton, there was an inside joke because some people had a basement suite with this big movie poster of Antonio Banderas in Desperado. It had this movie quote at the top that said: Sexy. Action. Cool." "It became an inside joke on how nobody could imagine using Sexy Action Cool in a real sentence. We'd walk around saying, 'You see that movie?' 'Yeah, it was sexy, action, cool.' Or 'That couch? That couch is really sexy, action, cool.'" The company founders snagged the related URL (which now directs to PopCap proper) and continued to not think much of the name, at first. As the site grew, however, it became clear that "Sexy Action Cool" was an awkward destination for mass-market family games.
What's in a Name: Obsidian Entertainment
Feargus Urquhart co-founded Obsidian Entertainment (Knights of the Old Republic 2, Fallout: New Vegas) after Interplay's Black Isle Studios closed in 2003. After we left Black Isle, we were going to start a company and we needed a new name. We wanted it to be a good name, a strong name, and we wanted it to be something that people would remember. And so we threw all of these names around -- we had Scorched Earth, we had Three Clown Software, and lots of other stuff. And eventually Obsidian got on that list, because we were Black Isle, and what's something like that? And someone said there's that Obsidian thing, that glassy, magma stuff, and we put it on there. So we came down literally with a short list, and we showed it to our significant others. And they were like, "All these names are dumb, except that one." So really it was the significant others that actually said that's what they would name a company, because it sounds cool, it has some relevance ... and it's not Three Clown Software. Obsidian Entertainment is currently working on Dungeon Siege 3, available this May and published by Square Enix. Like this feature? Be sure to check out the What's In A Name Archives.
What's in a Name: Black Isle Studios
Feargus Urquhart is now known as the co-founder of Obsidian Entertainment, but before that he helped found Black Isle Studios, a division of Interplay that created some PC RPG classics like the original Fallout series, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment. I took over the RPG division of Interplay in 1996, and we were trying to come up with a name, because "RPG Division" didn't work. Or people wanted to call it Dragon Play, and I'm a big nerd, but Dragon Play was too much, too nerdy. And we came up with all of these different things, we came up with 12 Gauge, but that didn't really fit us, and we came up with this and that. And I was always holding back a name, because it was me, it was from my history. So where Black Isle came from was that there is, more of a peninsula really, but there's an isle in Scotland, and it's called the Black Isle, and that's actually where the Urquharts came from. So I was always going to hold that back for when I got to start a studio, but Brian Fargo, who ran Interplay, was getting mad at me, and was like, "You just need a name!" And he walked in and was going to come in at me, and I was like alright, I got a name, and it's Black Isle. He was like, "That's perfect!" And that's how Black Isle Studios got named. Black Isle Studios was laid off from Interplay in 2003, when most of its team went on to create Obsidian Entertainment, currently working on Dungeon Siege 3 with Square Enix. Stay tuned for the story behind Obsidian's name from Urquhart himself. Like this feature? Be sure to check out the What's In A Name Archives.
What's in a Name: TimeGate Studios
Most of the time, company names are obscure enough that we have no clue what their origin is. In the case of TimeGate Studios we always thought we had a fairly good idea, but, as it happens, we were just letting our Richard Dean Anderson obsession cloud our judgment. Joystiq: So, TimeGate. You were just watching a lot of Stargate, right? TimeGate Studios head Adel Chaveleh: "The concept was that we had a lot of different ideas for game types -- there was fantasy-themed, WWII-themed, sci-fi. Basically, as a company, we want to kind of be a portal to our fans and to ourselves to different worlds and universes. So TimeGate was the name that we came up with that seemed to kind of communicate that. Ironically, it played out exactly that way. It's like, fantasy with Kohan, and Axis & Allies is WWII, and here we are with our own sci-fi franchise [Section 8]. I'm trying to think of what other time periods we can go to, but we'll see I guess." [laughs] TimeGate Studios' next title, Section 8: Prejudice, will be available for download on PC, 360 and PS3 this year. Like this feature? Be sure to check out the What's in a Name Archives.
What's in a Name: InXile Entertainment
It's time for another titular origin story! Today, Matthew Findley, president of inXile Entertainment, explains the creation of a studio name haunting English teachers everywhere: I worked with Brian Fargo at Interplay for a number of years and we both left Interplay at the same time. We knew we wanted to stay in video games, so starting a company seemed like a good idea -- he spent 20 years at Interplay and I was there for 13. When we were first out there, trying to figure out what to do next, we kinda felt like we were in exile, and we made fake cards with a fake company name just to have a card to go to E3 with. And before we ever thought of the name "inXile," Brian put as his job description on the cards: "Leader in exile." People got such a kick out of that card, we kept saying "in exile, in exile, in exile" so much that we just thought, "Why not make up a new word?" And so we did. InXile is currently working on Hunted: The Demon's Forge, which will launch on the Xbox 360 and PS3 on June 1. Like this feature? Be sure to check out the What's In A Name Archives.
What's in a Name: Insomniac Games
We were unable to sleep while wondering about the origin story of Insomniac Games' name, but now we've got the answer from CEO and President Ted Price. Time to make that warm glass of milk and go to bed: It was the spring of 1996 and we were getting ready to announce our first game (Disruptor) at E3. At the time, we were doing business as Xtreme Software. But, right before we began working on the press release for the game, we found out that an Arizona database company was also called Xtreme. I don't know how they found us, but I remember getting a letter from a lawyer explaining that we couldn't use their name. Suddenly we had a few days to find a new moniker. We put up a white board and started writing down every name we could think of. We had about 100 that seemed viable. Some of the more popular ones were Ragnarok, Black Sun, Monument, Planet X and Firestorm. My personal favorite was one that [Chief Creative Officer] Brian Hastings had suggested - Ice-9. We liked it so much that we got permission from Kurt Vonnegut to use it. Ironically, it turned out that someone who HADN'T gotten permission from Kurt was already using it. And similarly all of our other favorites were in use. With about 24 hours to go Insomniac Games popped up. It made sense given we weren't sleeping much anyway. And incredibly, no one else was using it. Since then our logo has changed a couple of times. But fortunately the name has stuck. Insomniac Games' next two titles, Resistance 3 and Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One, are scheduled for later this year on PlayStation 3. Like this feature? Be sure to check out the What's In A Name Archives.
