Top of mind for me after reading this article is that Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet should just be called The Heretic Prophet, and Horizon: Zero Dawn should have just been called Zero Dawn.
I asked GameDiscoverCo founder Simon Carless
Talking about names, that is a very Unamerican family name.
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.
Do people really look at the videos on Steam? I always immediately click past them to look at the images.
I watch them for any gameplay footage.
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.”
Kojima really is a gift to modern gaming with his naming conventions
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…
Most game name are uninspired and forgettable on its own. The success and being popular makes them so memorable. Classics like Super Mario World wasn’t particular inspired name at the time it came out. Super Metroid or many other Super games had this issue. The games itself made the names unforgettable, not the name.
When Super Metroid came out, you could basically count every release that came out in a year across all platforms. That’s not possible anymore. There are probably plenty of great games we haven’t played because the marketing was done no favors by their titles. To name one off the top of my head, Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun. Blades of the Shogun is an excellent title, but they wanted a larger Shadow Tactics series that never came to be. That studio didn’t see enough success to survive even 10 years after that game’s release, but they saw good reviews.
Look at Mixtape… The name is hardly special, but the game is widely known and recognized (as good or bad), not hidden gem. My point is, game names aren’t memorable because of their name; game names are memorable because of their popularity. Especially RPGs have often unspectacular names.
More (relatively… little a lot relative) recent games that became hits or known, despite their forgettable names: Blue Prince, Big Walk, Cyberpunk 2077, Starfield.
I don’t mean to throw any shade, but you chose a list of some of the best titles this medium has put forward in recent years as examples of forgettable names. That, in part, explains their success.
The point of my list is to list popular games with forgettable names. I don’t understand what you mean. You mean the games are partially successful because the names are forgettable?? The list shows, that the names doesn’t matter at all.
No, those games are partly successful because they’re all quite excellent titles. Cyberpunk 2077 is a little hokey, but it’s because of the license it’s attached to, and it at least immediately conveys what the game is. I think you chose some of the most memorable titles in recent years and called them forgettable. Big Walk was even listed in the article as a positive!
Exactly that’s what I’m saying. The other games listed as not memorable is not because of their names. So it doesn’t matter what ht names are, as my list proofs.
Respectfully, that makes no sense.
1994 had at least 360 games for the SNES alone. Include PC games and it becomes basically impossible to find actual numbers because of poor archival and sheer volume. Yes, there are more games today, by at least a few orders of magnitude, but there has always been a large volume of frankly slop.
That orders of magnitude difference is why it can be so hard to remember a game with a bad title that might otherwise be up your alley though.
<NOUN>FALL.
There was an earlier era, when <NOUN> hadn’t been already taken.
Yep, roguelikes are roguelikes, because there was literally a game called “Rogue” way back in 1980: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_(video_game)
AUTUMNFALL
FALLFALL.
Rise of the <noun>
Shadow of the <noun>
Tomb Raider did both of them.
Wth your example in the post “Horizon: Zero Dawn should have just been called Zero Dawn”, how would it be more memorable? Horizon is a catch word to have with all their games in the series, for easier recognition with later releases. It makes perfect sense for a game series that is planned to be like this, and perfectly memorable.
The game quality makes names memorable, not the other way around.
Look, it wouldn’t have been a huge improvement to just call it Zero Dawn, but at least you get past the gore of the unnecessary colon they talk about in the article. All three of the words in Horizon: Zero Dawn probably have a high hit rate if you’re searching for titles on Steam, but getting rid of the colon would still have made it a more interesting title.
I did pull those as examples of bad title trends called out in the article, but the likes of Sony can muscle past problems with a bad title by throwing money at it, and if you’re just one of a few dozen indies in the middle of a Keighley showcase, you don’t have that luxury.
I don’t think it would be an improvement for the name to call it Zero Dawn. Just like all Zelda games are Legend of Zelda. It wouldn’t have changed anything about the success of the game or being memorable. If anything, it was a good idea, so they can name a future game in the series as Horizon (like Legend of Zelda) with a subtitle as the main title for the game.
Or do you want games be named as Zero Dawn 1, Zero Dawn 2, Zero Dawn 3? Is that more memorable?
Which wouldn’t even make sense considering “Zero Dawn” in context of the Horizon series is that it is a specific canonical event that is only discussed in the second game. The first game didn’t have any notion of the Zero Dawn event afaik.
I’ve only played the first game, and they for sure mention Zero Dawn.
Nope. You’re right. I’m stupid. Zero Dawn is the first game. Forbidden West is the second Horizon game. I flipped which was which.
See the article’s debate over adding the colon to the first entry in a series, and I basically share the same viewpoint. If the first entry was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, it would have been much harder to solidify itself with people learning of this thing for the first time. See my comments elsewhere in this thread here with Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun as a first entry for a series that didn’t take and how I don’t think Horizon aptly describes its game or story.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, it would have been much harder to solidify
But that was not my argument at all. This is not the first game in the series. My example was about the first game being “The Legend of Zelda”. The forgettable part “The Legend of” just puts mystery and a sort of adventure feeling to it. If the game was named just “Zelda”, it would less convey what type of game it is. That was my point I’m making. And for your example of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past as the first entry, I think it would be not bad as first title too. There are lot of games with a main title and a subtitle. The subtitle is like a specific book in a series. Like Pokemon: Red or Pokemon: FireRed. There is a main title that is consistent across the entire series and a subtitle that is the specific game title. It makes perfect sense to have games with colons like this. It doesn’t make games less memorable because of that.
I don’t think the success of game Shadow Tactics: Blade of the Shogun would change with the name change. I think Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is a more memorable name than The Heretic Prophet, but I don’t think it would matter to change it before release. Nowadays the games success doesn’t depend on the name of the game, it matters what game is recommended, the video trailers of games, description, keywords, ratings and reviews. Nothing would change with those suggested name changes, nobody cares about that.
And my listed examples in our other discussion proofs that.
Your listed examples would get far closer to proving the opposite, as I said in that comment chain.
Horizon : Zero Dawn is a terrible title. Zero Dawn is only marginally better.
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?
What throws me on Wild Hearts is they also have a stylized W icon that screams Witcher to me. It always throws me off.
The Outer Worlds & Outer Wilds are pretty hard for me to differentiate.
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:
- Half-Life: Mysteries of the G-Man
- Ghost: Tsushima
- BioShock: Fall of Rapture
- Diablo: The Battle of Hell
- PUBG: Battlegrounds…wait a minute…
I’d rather have numbered titles in the series so that I don’t have to memorize the order.
Yeah, the companies would rather not, though, because people may think you need to play them in order…
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.
Here to correct as requested: it’s Pokémon. You’re welcome!
