Name our upcoming 4x (best - Stars Beyond Reach) POLL 10/27

[x4000]

Fragile Sun
Strategic Wreckage
World Science
Station Dawn
Energy Civilizations
Landing Imminent
Starlight Frontier
Space First
Fragile Twilight
Civilizations Worth Saving
Stars Dream
Loyalty Void
Impossible Orbit
Nations Corrupted

[Pepisolo]

How strict do you have to be with the names regarding other games with the same title? For example, Star Settlers seems pretty cool to me, but there is already an Amiga game of the same name. If this is a problem you could just make it one world -- Starsettlers. Another alternative, The Starlanders. Gonna put my thinking cap on for this. It seems imperative that we come up with something in the same league as The Last Federation considering the click-through rate data....tricky, though!

[x4000]

Starlanders is pretty cool.

The main questions with names that overlap something else are:
1. Are we reasonably going to cause a problem for the other party (aka let's not be a jerk to them).
2. Are we and they going to be confused together in a negative way for either of us?
3. Do they hold a trademark on it? (http://www.trademarkia.com/trademarks-search.aspx?tn=star+settlers)
4. Would we be forced to sue them to protect a trademark if we signed up for one?  (Not that we have trademarked anything so far).

It mainly boils down to:
A. Will it harm them.
B. Will it harm us.


Anyhow, yeah. finding a name with a really compelling hook is definitely imperative in my opinion.  AI War had time to build up its reputation in a time where storefront space was not so crowded.  So did A Valley Without Wind.  Skyward Collapse had an engaging name, but even there it was an easier storefront as recently as that.

I don't actually have clickthrough data for any games except Bionic Dues and The Last Federation, unfortunately.  But the entire transaction process is really very effective for AI War and A Valley Without Wind and The Last Federation, and less so for the others.  That doesn't isolate just the name and capsule image, unfortunately, but we can at least assume that the names are either a) doing pretty well on clickthrough; or b) having an inordinately high purchase rate after clickthroughs.

For Valley, I seriously doubt the latter is the case, and honestly with AI War I wonder, too.  So I'm betting the names there have a high clickthrough, but I can't say for certain.

[x4000]

Blue pointed out that Starlanders is too close to Skylanders, really.

[Pepisolo]

Blue pointed out that Starlanders is too close to Skylanders, really.

Dang.... thought it wouldn't be that easy.

Thanks for the title info, Chris, much appreciated. Now I've gotta get my thinking cap on...

[x4000]

No problem at all.

Pablo had an interesting question:

Anything in particular you're trying to pinpoint with the title? What theme are you trying to push?

And my response:

It really could be any of a dozen themes, honestly.  I went into some depth here about my overall goals: http://arcengames.com/free-tool-for-game-developers-random-game-title-generator-with-source-code/

Essentially, my goal is to have a high clickthrough rate on Steam so that people actually get to the trailer and the screenshots and description.  Prior to that point, it's only the name attracting any attention at all, other than the small capsule image.

The other thing is that we want the right KIND of people clicking through.  If we call this Battle Cities and get a huge clickthrough from casual players who wind up with no interest in the game, that's not useful.  But if it's Empire Empire of Ages War and we get all the strategy gamers intrigued enough to at least click in, then we have a hook and probably can convince them with a trailer and whatnot.

In other words, to put it more bluntly, I'm increasingly viewing the name as a marketing tactic more than an artistic decision.  That said, the name also has to be something that I can say without blushing, if you know what I mean.  Telling someone "oh yeah, we made CryoColony" just sounds goofy and isn't the sort of thing I can say without thinking "but really it's a cool and serious game, I mean it!"  Granted, if I have that reaction, so would others.

So it's a matter of:
1. Attracting high interest from the mixture of sci-fi and strategy fans based on the name alone.
2. Sounding badass so that we can all be proud of saying the name versus timid about it, and so that the players feel the same.
3. Being memorable enough not to get lost in the fog of generic genre names.

[x4000]

I don't want to get into spoilers right in the title of this game, so there are certain words I want to avoid using in connection with this... but I've had the idea that it might be a really good idea to use the word Federation in this again.  That is a really heavy trigger word (in a good way) for sci-fi fans, and it also makes it clear that this game ties in with TLF from a story sense.

It's not The Last Federation 2, because it's not remotely the same sort of game (not even the same genre).  I don't want to get roasted alive again like what happened with Valley 2 -- we changed genres, despite still being in the platformer milieu, and all the Valley 1 fans were pissed.  I want to make it clear that TLF is its own thing (like AI War is its own thing), and they'll each have their own expansion lines and so forth as planned.

THAT said, a huge amount of stuff from TLF comes over to this new game -- basically all the alien races -- and all the AI War alien races do, too.  Story-wise, as I've mentioned in the past, this takes place in the future of both games.  So this links two "unrelated" series by story, but forms a third independent series in terms of gameplay mechanics.

This is VERY far into the future, and my first thought of what to call this is Federation Legacy.  My wife wasn't super enthused about that, and though Legacy of the Federation was better.  Which I think is too long, particularly to fit in a Steam capsule.

Other things that use the word Federation in there might also work well, not sure.  I don't want to go with something like Fallen Federation or whatever, because that presupposes some things about the fate of the Federation.  I'd rather be fate-neutral on that particular point until you actually get into the game and find out some things for yourself.

Of course, calling this game ANYTHING with the word federation in it might be asking for Valley 2 style trouble.  But something tells me it's a different thing, I don't know.  It's clearly not a sequel to anyone who looks at it even vaguely.  Seeing an on-land hex grid versus space battles is pretty telling.

[x4000]

Some other possibilities along those lines:

Distant Federation
Federation Echoes
Exiled Federation
Federation Landing
Federation Prime
Planetary Federation
Federation Revolution
7th Federation
Twilight Federation
Federation Void

[Mal]

The War of Voices

The First God

Internecine God

The Soul of the World

[nas1m]

I *love* Federation Legacy. It has the right amount of implied difference to TLF in exactly the right way - Legacy implies "time"- while still implying its heritage. And thats the main difference after all aside from genre of course. I say go for it!

[Mal]

Nexus of Empires

Neo-Federations

The Empires That Fell

A Haven for the Galaxy

Gods, Cities, and Sapiens

The Voice That Builds All

[Hearteater]

Colonial Federation

[Pepisolo]

I think tying it in a little with TLF is a decent idea considering the crossover with races and whatnot, however I would go with something much more subtle and just make both titles start with "The", and have three words. The Lost Colonists, for example. You could then brand a series of games which use the same backstory, similarly. Having to limit the title to using the word Federation seems like it's going to restrict how many good and relevant names you can come up with. Although, I do need to think on it some more.

Oh, one more title that doesn't quite work, plus is apparently virtually the same as an Android app -- Starshapers. That's all I got. This is tough. The bar was set too high with TLF!

[topper]

I have not parsed the full discussion, but was there any discussion about adding "4X" to the end of the title? That gives the same effect without needing the word "Empire" in the title to draw in the strategic gamers.

A couple that I like:

Fallen Cities
Frontier Command
Frontier Conquest
Frontier Exile 4X
Planetary Domain
War Eminence
Federation Legacy 4X

with or without a 4X on the end.

Also, a few funny ones from the name generator:
Huge Science
Imperial Imperium
Strange Alpha   <---- can be the new working name if a name is not chosen by the time of the alpha ;-)
Dark Sun

[Castruccio]

By using Federation do you risk alienating those people who didn't like TLF?  In other words, if you have the opportunity to start clean with no connections, why not do so?