The Name Game

Whereas my last blog post was a bit of a pipebomb style ramble about the state of games journalism and how crap it can be at times, this newest post will be a bit more focused on what I sought out to achieve on this place to begin with: chronicle the creation of my new video game site.

I'll admit that progress has been going slowly on the development front, but considering I'm the only person working on things right now (which isn't exactly new territory since I was a one man machine on Shogun Gamer), I'm not freaking out about things just yet.  However, one very important element that I've been wrestling over within the depths of my crazy mind is the actual name of the site.

A few potential names for the site have popped up, one of which has already been taken by a rather piss-poor micro-blog, so I'm certainly in the brainstorming mindset of as now. The one conundrum that I have is what sort of tone I want to establish with the name since it'll essentially be the key pillar for the site, branding across other platforms such as YouTube, and revenue avenues such as advertising with 3rd party partners and merchandise.  The element that I'm thinking about closely in connection with the name is whether or not I want to follow the somewhat long established pattern of having a name be "___Gamer".

Obviously I was already part of a site that followed the ___Gamer pattern since I co-created and worked on Shogun Gamer for five years.  Even then, that name somewhat surfaced out of our collective asses without much thought given into it, which I honestly think is the case with most indie/micro gaming sites that are around today.  Shogun Gamer obviously had a catchy name to it, though it really had no brand logic behind it; it was just a cool name that elicited a vision of some sort of ninja like gaming figure.  It wasn't even until the fifth year the site was active that we finally had a proper logo, which was created two years prior, and even then Shogun Gamer didn't have much of an identity to make the name actually make sense.

So branching out entirely on my own I'm looking not to make some of the same mistakes that Shogun originally did and other sites continue to make these days.  I think it's understandable for some folks to follow the ___Gamer routine since its been so ingrained within gaming culture more or less - despite the actual use of the word "Gamer" having a rather negative connotation amongst some people given the usage within maligned marketing campaigns of the Mountain Dew and Doritos variety.  So what's the best way to go about things, use the word Gamer within the name of a site or do something else?

Such a question is what I'm asking myself on a daily basis as I try to think of names and then subsequently check to see if they're available in all the key fields.  The alternative of not using the ___Gamer pattern is choosing a name that's a bit more out there yet still drums up the thought of gaming within the masses.  Stuff like Polygon or IndieStatik is clever stuff that works, but the danger, at least in my mind, of going down that path is selecting a name that may be a bit pretentious or simply too damn out there for people to accept.

In some ways I'm am leaning towards selecting a name that doesn't use the word Gamer within it since I do think that our industry, both the general games industry and games journalism, needs to mature in a lot of ways. Sure, back in the day it was awesome to have stuff like GamePro or GameSpy, but the constant use of the word which is the key descriptor of our industry is somewhat silly in my mind. Imagine if every music magazine/site used the word music in its title rather than something imaginative such as RollingStone or Spin.  Wouldn't that be silly as hell if we had dozens of major sites that used the word music or movie in its title since that what it covers? Again, it may make sense for people to use certain words in naming their publication since it allows users to easily find or remember it, but in the world of gaming I'm getting a bit burned out by seeing the words Gamer or Gaming used in every damn title.

So that's that I guess.  The name game is continuing within my mind and I'm hoping to figure out something soon so I can go about securing all the proper stuff and get going 100% in branding design and site development (review stuff, image design, etc.)