Today I'm going to look in-depth at some titles I like. These
titles don't break the rules I laid out earlier, but rather exploit
the rules to create a sense of action. A game title is usually a
single word or a short phrase: if something that short can do some
character development or advance a conflict, it's probably a good
title. So I don't like trademarky titles or most synecdoche. I also
don't like the attitude-laden titles, but I think that's just
personal taste.
Anyway, here are some of my favorite titles (never mind how I feel
about the games), with explanations of how I think they work.
I've mentioned "Spacewar!" before, but that exclamation mark is
great. It takes what's objectively a horrible concept and treats it
with Dr. Strangelove-like comic fatalism. Given that "Spacewar!"
was developed at a time when computers mainly did the bidding of the
military and big business, this is also a title with attitude.
"Hunt the Wumpus" is not the best title, but it's probably the
first one to exploit the second-person nature of games. For
reference, it came out around the same time as "Pong".
"Grand Theft Auto" uses synecdoche to describe the lifestyle of the
protagonist (a criminal) in the vocabulary of the antagonist (the
police). It's also got a bit of attitude, in that this is also the
vocabulary of those purple-lipped censors who blame violent video games
such as GTA for society's ills.
"Leisure Suit Larry" is a great title for a similar reason: the
protagonist is being described the way the player sees him, not
according to his own self-image.
"Gauntlet" is a pun, describing both the gameplay and the fantasy
setting. Again, not the best title, but a cut above most 80s
arcade titles.
"Mario Bros." says "this game has two-player simultaneous play" in
a subtle way.
"Harvest Moon" combines the mundane with the fantastic
effectively. It's a bit of metonymy that implies a job, a setting, an
activity, a time of year, and a mood, all in two words. Great title.
"Grim Fandango" uses metonymy to describe the mood, the subject
matter, and the setting.
"Altered Beast" smashes the antiseptic, ass-covering passive voice
of corporate mad science ("Altered") into the feral immediacy and
Victorian judgementalism of "Beast". It's a case of a game that
doesn't live up to its title.
"Startropics": Remember how I said that "Star" could be either
familiar or alienating imagery? This title uses it both ways at
once. At first the title gives the impression of being on a tropical
island looking at the stars, away from the light pollution. This is
the imagery used on the box cover and title screen. But why are the
words jumbled together? How can "star" modify "tropics"? "Star
Ocean" is clearly a metaphor, but "star tropics"?. Suddenly "star"
in the title looks like an intruder. And indeed, that's what happens
in the game. The stars have come down to the tropics for nefarious
purposes. This is a one-word title with a plot.
"Barkley, Shut Up And Jam: Gaiden" is a great satirical title,
taking another game's terrible title and appending a
pretentious-sounding (at least in English) suffix. On the other hand,
"I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game" would be a stronger title if
it lost the suffixes and became just "I Wanna Be The Guy". Its
strength comes from its unusual use of the first person. Relatedly,
BSUaJ is a terrible title because it's unclear whether it's supposed
to be first, second, or third person.
"Mighty Jill Off" is not really satirical, per se, but it's another
example of an effective title that parodies an earlier title.
I tenatively like game titles that adopt a person other than the
second. "I Wanna Be The Guy" is great, as mentioned earlier, and "No
One Can Stop Mr. Domino!" does a good job breaking the rule that a
game named after the protagonist is implicitly in second person. But
the more recent "I Fell In Love With The Majesty Of Colors" doesn't
work for me. Possibly because it also uses the past tense, which
doesn't exactly scream "gameplay".
"Nobunaga's Ambition" is a strong third-person title that does a
lot of character development in two words, one of which is a
person's name. Oda Nobunaga was so ambitious they made a game about it!
A lot of game titles are just boring (most media tie-in games fall
into his category) so I haven't covered them. I would like to
highlight another title I don't like, even though it's an interesting
title from a good game: "Q*Bert". I always felt Q*Bert was trying
too hard, the Bonk the Caveman to Pac-Man's Sonic. It's a short step
from the trademarkable misspelling and random punctuation to
nonsensical Japanese-style names on the one hand, and "extreme"
comic-book-style names on the other. I wrote a little rant about
Q*Bert here, but I think I'll save it and maybe use it for the
secret project.
"Dactyl Nightmare" is so-bad-it's-good. Unlike "Nightmare on Elm
Street", which is third-person and merely promises to recount
someone else's nightmare, "Dactyl Nightmare" pledges that you
will live the nightmare. But "Nightmare" takes the stage after
"Dactyl", which although technically an English word, is a word that
refers to poetic meter. Sure, it's an abbreviation for
"Pterodactyl", but that kind of chatty informality isn't really
appropriate for a nightmare. And even "Pterodactyl Nightmare" is
kind of silly. So the two bits of incompatible imagery create a
humorous instead of a terrifying effect.
I think it would be fun to go over other peoples' favorite
game names with these newly-developed tools, so leave a comment.
(6) Wed Feb 04 2009 19:31 How Game Titles Work, Part 5: Selected Titles:
Overall, I think game titles have gotten better over time. Not because
we've gotten better at naming games, but because all the obvious
names were taken in the 1970s and early 1980s. And then in the 1980s
and 1990s, the trademarkable-word technique and basic metonymy were
used to gobble up big chunks of the namespace. So if you're making a
game in 2009, you have to be creative. It's like domain
names. Everything that's not a little bit out there has already been
taken.