naming-conventions
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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."
Breakfast Topic: Do you use proper in-character names for all your characters?
Confession: My very first healer, the one I made after discovering that I liked to heal but which I still very much considered an alt, had a joke name. This was in a game that allowed surnames. When I dinged the level at which I could finally choose a surname, I found myself overly dry on inspiration and overly moist with wine -- and it was thus that I burdened my stalwart cleric with "Bubuquisser." It wasn't 10 levels before I was petitioning a GM for a name change (which he magnanimously granted, thank goodness). I'd learned my lesson. Silly names are not for me. I'm not a full-on MMO roleplayer, but I do strive for a sense of immersion. Even something as common as naming conventions makes me uneasy at the character creation screen. I have a few patterns that I follow, and I keep things like race in mind, but I break away if I get even an inkling that another name might better fit my idea of that character's sensibilities. What's your naming style? Do you use a mix of in-character and out-of-game, real-world references? Would you find a tip of the hat to a fictional or historical character or reference off-putting? Are you cool with pun names?
Dev Juice: What's the deal with k for constants?
Dear Dev Juice, What's the deal with the k in #define kFilename. Is it German? Does it stand for konstant? What gives? Pure Fusion Dear Pure Fusion, The k prefix seems to originate in a naming system called Hungarian Notation, developed by Charles Simonyi at Xerox PARC. The idea behind this system is that the name of a variable should reflect its semantics. Wikipedia offers a sense of these naming conventions, such as arru8NumberList, meaning the variable is an array of unsigned 8-bit integers. Apple follows a similar but more practical convention. Like the original Hungarian Notation, it encodes opaque types, but it does so with a distinctly Apple spin and without all the silly made up non-obvious naming bits like "arru8". As you've already noted, Apple's "k" prefix indicates constants. Typically, the k prefix is followed by type, followed by a more general indication of the item's use. A typical Apple symbol, such as kCFCharacterSetWhitespace can easily be broken down as k (constant) + CFCharacterSet (opaque type) + Whitespace (unique role). Hungarian Notation's goal of encoding semantics into symbols has gone in and out of fashion over time. Some devs love it, others hate it. Most fall in the middle, as does Apple's usage. Being able to instantly identify the role of a symbol as a constant is a win, but a mindless adherence to pedantry in unnatural naming can become a stumbling block. Fortunately, Apple seems to have chosen its path well and its naming schemes are easy to follow while remaining semantically rich. Happy developing!
The Daily Grind: What's in a name?
We recently talked over some of the games we are playing amongst the team, and we found that everyone's take on names was quite varied. Some of our staff like to go for authenticity in regards to whatever character archetype they're making, and thus won't start characters until they have the perfect name. Others of the staff like making up silly names, and jump in with wild abandon. Some of the rest of us take names we've either used before, or names we've picked up along the way -- from popular culture, books, even history. For me, personally, I tend to be fond of names gleaned from books and history, with a particular leaning towards Egyptian names or cyberpunk novels. I have friends that I know who have carried the same names from game to game. On the other hand, there are those poor folks who use the most common elements in gaming/pop culture and name themselves one of the "new-player-alert" names, such as Sephiroth, Drizzt, Gimlii, or Legolas -- or any variants thereof. How about you? What's your favorite character's name, and where did you take the inspiration for it? Have you ever refused to group with someone due to an overused or goofy name (such as "Dethrouge" on a rogue) or have you found yourself complimenting people on using cool names? Is naming really that important to you, or do you just kind of smack whatever on your character so you can get into the game?
