What's In a Name? Everything
I think probably the most upsetting part of having to permanently shelve my writing gamification project is that it completely wasted my totally sweet name and logo for it. I needed to come up with something that gave the right vibe and tone for the game. Something that conveyed a little bit of what the game was about. Something that didn't sound agonizingly stupid.
And now I get to do it all over again. Yayyyy.
I think probably the most upsetting part of having to permanently shelve my writing gamification project is that it completely wasted my totally sweet name and logo for it. I needed to come up with something that gave the right vibe and tone for the game. Something that conveyed a little bit of what the game was about. Something that didn't sound agonizingly stupid.
And now I get to do it all over again. Yayyyy.
I did a little bit of "name research" to try to knock myself into some sort of inspiration, almost first thing while I was writing up all my design notes for this Cozy Browser Game ™, and I still can't decide if I'm relieved or dismayed that everything which came to mind as within shouting distance of the type of game I want to make has a very, very consistent style of name.
They're all named after the place. All of them.
"But Cal," says my convenient imaginary reader, "doesn't that obviously make your life easier? You only need to come up with one name!"
It certainly seems that way on the surface, doesn't it? But here's the catch. If I name my game the name of the setting, then the name of the setting has to be a good name for a game. I don't actually get to do less work, you see. I get to do more work, because if I go that route, the name needs to fit all the criteria for being a good setting name, and also all the criteria for being a good game name. It's agony. I don't want to do it. But I CAN'T FIGURE OUT ANY OTHER APPROACH.
Now, I could go the lazy way and just follow the early emerging pattern for the "cozy MMO" genre, of which we have two examples: Palia, and Loftia. That's a pretty clear-cut pattern: (thing)ia. It's also... let's be honest, almost painfully generic. It's up there with a "cozy rpg" game being named "(Thing) Valley" or a survival crafting game being named "(thing)craft", except it tells you even less about the actual game. When I first saw the name Palia it immediately zoomed out of my brain as totally uninteresting and irrelevant. So yeah, we're not doing that.
My convenient imaginary reader chimes in again: "What about the way you named that other game? The one you mentioned all the way back at the beginning?" That's a great thought, Imaginary Reader! Unfortunately, there is a major obstacle with trying that approach, as well.
See, that project is named Soul Scribes, and it draws from a primary conceit behind the gameplay itself. You write words in real life, but then writing those words has metaphysical (or just physical) effects within the mechanics of the game world. Crafting. Exploring. Fishing. Et cetera. So I took that concept of "writing words is kind of like using magic" and riffed on it until I got something that I thought sounded really solid.
For this game, I don't have a convenient core-mechanic conceit to build off of. So even thought it would be a really clever approach... I got nothin'.
Although... I guess, rather than examining the setting of the game, I could think more about creating some kind of special/unique identity within the game for the players, and then build on that? It's not a bad idea. It's not something I've thought about before this moment, but hey, no time like the present! Let's do some prior-example thinking!
Palia - This one is pretty interesting, to be honest. The conceit here is that all (okay, almost all, there's the cat guy) of the residents of Palia are these pink-purple elves called Majiri, while the player characters are humans.
The twist: humans wiped themselves out in some kind of ancient apocalyptic cataclysm and nobody knows why suddenly humans started appearing again. (The lore in this game is actually pretty cool.) It's a great "why is the player special" conceit, but, well, you can see why it'd be hard to name the game based on it. And while I am strongly considering having there be some kind of distant cataclysm (I love that trope), having the players be some sort of thought-extinct species just seems.... Well, hm. I will ponder that some more.
Improbable Island - So this one is pretty fun(ny). The name of the game is the name of the location, right. But it's also the name of, get this, a dystopian reality TV show. That's right: all the players have been drafted into this fantastical and psychotic TV show as unwilling participants. It's like The Truman Show meets Heart of Gold's Improbability Drive wrapped up in weird English grotesquerie. I definitely am not going this direction, though.
Fallen London - You are nobody! You begin the game in prison, for unknown reasons. You get out of prison, find your way into London (such as it is, dragged beneath the crust of the earth), and then proceed to single-player-RPG the heck out of the game. So, while the gameplay and setting offer inspiration... the player-defining premise does not.
Stardew Valley - This one gets to stand in for the whole genre, I think. You are, essentially, An Outsider. The newcomer to town.
Palia is very clearly inspired by games like this, and if you step back and consider the two at the same time, it becomes clear that the whole "mysteriously reappearing Humans from the Void" conceit is in fact a clever way to present that concept of being "an outsider" in a game where, unlike the plethora of single-player games typified by Stardew Valley, there are going to need to be multiple outsiders. In fact, there may be more "outsiders" than actual residents.
It's an interesting lore-design consideration, but.... Well. Having the name represent a theme of being an outsider sounds terrible, but having a name that represents the concept of finding and building yourself a new home - not just a house, but a sense of belonging? That's got some promise. And that's a pretty core theme to the genre, if you ask me.
So all I need to do is come up with a name built around "finding home", that conveys a light-hearted, low-fantasy tone, isn't already in use by another published game or website - and above all, sounds good. Or just name the setting and use that. Who knows.
On the topic of names, I also need to come up with a name for the "turns" you spend in order to do things. In KoL, they're Adventures. In Improbable Island, they're just a stamina bar. In Fallen London, they're... Candle? You have a candle and it burns down. It's visually aesthetic but not very easy to use words for.
I've just been using turns as a placeholder, but it's so... bland. Technical. Barely any better than calling them AP for "Action Points". But when they can be used for anything from crafting to gathering to travelling, it's difficult to come up with a more aesthetic - or dare I say, vibe-y - term for it.
And even once I get all of those names - the game, the setting, the turns points - I get to name even more things! All the towns you can live in or travel to. All the NPCs. All the regions. All the Points of Interest ™ (a.k.a. landmarks). At least I'm just looking at 5 towns, and I only need to make one for initial development, so those are, if nothing else, lower priority. Gotta look on the bright side for these things.