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.
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.
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.
The first game absolutely mentions Zero Dawn. It’s, like, a big plot reveal.
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.
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.
No, they proof that the name of the game doesn’t matter. It can be forgettable name, yet the game can be memorable because its a good game and everyone talks about it. If the names were less forgettable, it wouldn’t change anything about their success, popularity and memorability. Names become memorable, because games become successful. Not the other way round.
You picked excellent titles and called them forgettable, one of which was a textbook example listed in the article as to how to choose a good name for a video game. You “proved” that picking good titles for video games helps them sell. Your choices for “forgettable” titles were, in my opinion, so bad that I’m surprised you didn’t list a top tier title like No Man’s Sky. And besides, Horizon: Zero Dawn is a successful video game, at least in part, because it doesn’t have the same discoverability problems that the developers do that are targeted by this article and Failbetter Games. I merely listed it because it came to mind with the criticisms about trying to start a new franchise with a colon like the other examples in the article.
I proofed that the titles of games doesn’t matter at all for the success and being memorable.