What’s in a Name?
By Adam Rodman
Eager, naive computer geeks for programmers–$17,000 a year
Handcuffs, stun guns, and leather whips to keep programmers in line–$200 a month
Renting the old ABC store for an office–$450 a month
An attractive gogo-dancing Swede for secretary–$35,000 a year
Finding the perfect name for your new software company–Priceless
Coming up with the perfect name can be difficult. Ask anyone’s parents: they’ll tell you of the unthinkable stress and hair-pulling they went through deciding between “Michael David” and “Ruddiger Cowpants III.” So imagine the trouble that software designers must go through picking a name for their fledgling company! In order to help you imagine, I have graciously included a sample conversation.
Chairman of the board: Okay, we need to come up with a name for our new game company. Brainstorm, people!
Chairperson 1: Ooh! How about “LucasArts Entertainment Company?”
Chairperson 2: You idiot, that company already exists! How about “Metallica?”
Chairman of the board: Kshpaghh (that’s the sound of the chairman slapping himself in the face, in case you were wondering).
But seriously, there is a bit more to a game company’s name than a couple of brainstorming morons. Sure, while some companies’ origins are pretty easy to guess (like LucasArts), others can get into that “deep thinking” territory, where only the brave that are very determined go.
Take Sierra On-Line, for example, developers of famous games including Kings Quest 7: The Princeless Bride, Space Quest 3: The Pirate of Pestulon, and Hamster Quest 5: The Final Squeal. (Okay, so there was no Hamster Quest, but that’s a pretty nifty idea, right? I mean, imagine, you’ve got a happy little hamster on the run from a conglomerate of world secret services. Ya know, like the KGB and the CIA? And they’re all trying to kill your hamster, who is only trying to deliver a secret message that can possibly save all humankind, and they don’t know so they’re trying to kill him! Why don’t you ignore all of this parenthesized text? Thanks …) Okay, so let’s take Sierra On-Line. You may think, “Gee, big mystery. They’re located by the Sierra Mountains. Thus, the logo and the name!” Ah, but you are not thinking deep, grasshopper. See the word “On-Line”? Sierra was made before the Internet age. So why the On-Line? Josh Mandel, of Sierra fame, was kind enough to explain.
“The word ‘on-line’ predates the Internet and the web. My casual understanding is that it goes back to the use of the word ‘line’ as short for ‘phone line.’ A person who was connected to the phone with you was said to be ‘on the line.’
“Years ago, when there was no public Internet, but their were many private bulletin board systems you could call into with your modem, any time you were using the phone lines to connect to a BBS or directly to somebody else’s computer, you were still “on line” (which was simply a shortened version of “on the phone line”). I’m not sure why Sierra tagged “on line” at the end of their name, except, perhaps, to distinguish themselves with a high-tech name (for the time, anyway!) from other companies with Sierra in the title.”
And how about the name Ubi Soft? No one is quite sure what it means (and no one quite knows how to pronounce it, it being French and all), but the leading thought it that it’s short for “ubiquitous.” When I was told this by the Ubi Soft PR woman, I immediately replied with a “huh?” So, if you’re like me and don’t know ubiquitous from supererogation, here’s our nifty little quote from Merriam-Webster’s: “ubiquitous adj constantly encountered.” Ubi Soft, of course, is quite ubiquitous, employing thousands of employees in several different companies.
The Gathering of Developers is named for exactly what it is: a bunch of developers that gathered together to have more influence on how their games were published. So why are they now known as GodGames? Simple, according to Jeff Smith, PR director at GodGames, “Because that is our URL, http://godgames.com. In the day of extra long web site addresses, a nice, short name is so much better.” And for the record, they’ve never been attacked by any religious groups.
Headfirst Productions (Simon the Sorcerer 3D) is named such because they make games that call for the player to use their “head first.”
Dreamcatcher is actually not named after those funky new-age hippy things. Instead, the big guys at Dreamcatcher thought the name properly represented the blend of entertainment, fantasy, and reality.
Shiny Entertainment is named after the R.E.M. song “Shiny Happy People.”
Game companies can be named after anything, from the nonsensical to the obvious, from the deep to the corny. Just rest assured, if sometime in the distant future an adventure game is published by the company “Adam Rodman’s Totally Super Cool Awesome Game Company,” I had something to do with it.
