The Name of The Game

[Jubal]

The Name of The Game

By Jubal

This is a short piece on naming games! A lot of people, especially in small gaming projects, need to find names for their game, and a lot of what some people come up with can be a little underwhelming.

Often, I think the trap people fall into is to try and take a name format they know from a larger game elsewhere, and then take something that sounds vaguely similar, without thinking about game names in terms of function. Game names, though, absolutely are a functional part of the game's marketing and experience.

Game names need to do one of three things, ideally more than one: they need to sound snappy and engaging, they need to tell people something about the game, or they need to give a hook people will be interested in. You don't need all of these in every game name - there are trade-offs - but these are core things to keep in mind.

Sounding snappy is the most subjective part of this setup, but it's important nonetheless. If  game name ideally shouldn't be more than about 4-5 syllables. If it's longer, then it at least should have an obvious abbreviation. All the same techniques that work in poetry or marketing also apply to game titles: think for example about assonance (whether words have sounds that form a pattern) and alliteration (same sound/letter at the start of the words). Sometimes the best way to get a sense of this is to literally try saying the name out loud, or get someone else to do it: the instinct of whether it sounds right is easier to get in spoken format.

A brief note here on articles. "A" and "The" have quite different functions in titles. It often IS worth using one or the other. "A Tale of Doom" is better than "Tale of Doom", but is also different to "The Tale of Doom". Use "the" when you want the name to feel definite and singular, and "A" when you want the name to feel like part of something wider, more ephemeral, or more specific to a character rather than the whole world.

Telling people something about the game is a complex problem. It's a major part of game naming – you want to be informative but ideally without just saying a feature directly. So for example "Dungeons of Hinterberg" is a really good info-title. Dungeons bring the correct expectations of dungeon-crawling, and Hinterberg implies some kind of mountain settlement, and that's basically the game... but it doesn't tell you everything, and it implies some uniqueness to what it's doing, because Hinterberg is a place the player presumable doesn't know (providing a bit of a hook). It's also important that Hinterberg provides a bunch of signals that a more generic name might not – hinter makes us think hinterland, berg is a common root for mountains. Dungeons of Alzorgard is not nearly as good a name, because Alzorgard tells us nothing by comparison. Conversely, the game "Tactical Battles" is too blunt a name. Quite a lot of games have tactical battles, so why people should play your game which hasn't told them anything other than that it has a very common feature in it is left unclear.

The "hook" element can also be phrased as "does the title create a question the player will want an answer to". This is a less strongly used element, but it can be pretty effective. Usually hooks aren't phrased as questions, though there are exceptions: it's about creating a juxtaposition of things that inspire curiosity, or using something that's inherently mysterious. Something like "There's A Gun In The Office" is a hook title: it does tell you quite a bit about the game's setting (guns and offices) but primarily its job is to set up a literal Chekhov's gun effect, an expectation that the gun will eventually go off, but without being clear about under what circumstances.

There's a sting in the tail of all these parts, though, which is that a lot of them are easier, or suggest longer names, for games that are in larger, better known franchises. This is for two reasons. Firstly, if an abbreviation can apply to multiple things, you need to be a pretty big game to muscle others out. DAI, in gaming circles, is Dragon Age: Inquisition. So if you went and made De Administrando Imperio, a Byzantine management sim based on the text of the same name by the emperor Constantine VII, you absolutely wouldn't manage to get more than about five actual Byzantinists joining with you in calling that DAI rather than the Dragon Age title.

Also, bigger game names can be longer because the need to inform a player that a title is part of a series they like is valuable enough to take the extra syllables to do. The extra six syllables to add "The Legend of Zelda" to a game's title is more than worth it because for most buyers the single most important factor in their decision to buy is just "it's another Zelda game!". Conversely, if you're producing the first game in a planned series, calling it "The Apocalypse of Artodor: Swords of Awakening" doesn't work as well. You may have 10 Apocalypse of Artodor games planned, but having that in the title doesn't yet mean anything to anyone and is a lot of weight of syllables for something which doesn't have a strong pull factor. It's also notable that a lot of bigger game series start with a simpler title rather than a long one with a colon: for example, the first Zelda game is just "The Legend of Zelda".


Now, let's look at examples!

Dragon Age: Origins. OK, I know it's the first game in a series. The Dragon reference also tells me it's probably fantasy. Solid title all round.

Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time. This seems a fairly long one – but most of the name is there to tell me things. First, the game tells me that it's a Legend of Zelda game, which is an already established franchise. The Ocarina of Time bit is more a hook than information, in that it makes us question "what does an Ocarina have to do with Time" and in many cases "hang on what's an Ocarina". So, informative and raises questions.

The Exile Princes. This tells me it's likely to involve rulers, maybe strategy or RPG elements, maybe exploration elements given the 'exile' element. All of which are correct.

Roadwarden. This is snappy and tells me who my character will be, really good informative title.

Wildermyth. Also snappy and tells me that a) there'll be a mythos/fantasy element and b) that there'll be some focus on the wilderness. Again, informative but the portmanteau saves on syllables, making it much cleaner than "Mythos of the Wilderness" would have been.

Rome: Total War. This tells me it's a Total War game. Even if I've not played one, Total War is a strategy concept in and of itself, so the franchise title works even if you're unfamiliar with the franchise. Also, it's about Rome. And the whole thing is done in four syllables.

Deponia. Actually one of the weaker examples here in that it tells me absolutely nothing. However, it sounds kinda cool, so fits the snappy criterion.

Under The Yoke. This is a really good one. It's short (four syllables) and it provides multiple meanings which both apply to the game. It's a game about medieval agriculture so animals will literally be yoked to plough fields, but the phrase "under the yoke" is often used for someone working excessively hard for someone else, as was the case with medieval peasants.

Tyranny. A three syllable, single word title that also gets across the overarching theme of the game, how you survive and create your own space under – while taking part in – a tyrannical overlordship.


Hopefully this illustrated some problems and possible solutions when it comes to game naming. Thinking through the three principles we had at the start – what does it tell the player, what questions does it raise, and does it sound good and do so efficiently – is a good basic framework that you can come back to.

Hope you found this useful! If you have any questions, comments, or things you think I've neglected to mention, please say so in the comments below. Or post your own game naming question/problem and I'm happy to see if I can advise at all!