I doubt anyone considering penning a flight simulator is concerned that Microsoft's latest product in that space is simply called "Flight".

There are a few companies that publish games called "Something Tycoon".

This seems like a storm in a tea cup, really.

SquallStrife wrote:

This seems like a storm in a tea cup, really.

Probably. Most game developers are small and the people who own and run them care about the art and are not inclined to start a war for petty reasons.

A few are not though, run by shareholders who simply want to maximize profits however possible.

So that is one plus side: Nekki Gmbh may be larger than the typical developer, but they're certainly nowhere near the size of Electronic Arts or Bethesda or such, plus I believe it's still privately owned and they have this little blurb on their "About Us" page:

"Money is not our main goal, just a necessary tool for addressing more interesting problems"

So there's hope. :)

BTW: If everything does turn out OK, I'll change the name of the thread. :B

I would just name it Vectorzone like you intended, if/when it gets on Greenlight I will thumb it up for you and purchase it, maybe do a Early Access if you need the funds 😀

changing the thread title is a bit too late (with all our responses carrying the original name) 😀

Dominus wrote:

changing the thread title is a bit too late (with all our responses carrying the original name) :)

It would mostly be just to indicate that the situation was resolved in an acceptable way. ;)

Vekterzonne.

Problem solved. 😀

(Most of this is just a rant but there is some potential good coming out of this situation so fast-forward to after "HOWEVER" if you just want to get to the good stuff.)

Well, so far I've not received a reply from either Steam or Nekki. :/

I've been trying my best to come up with alternate names but I've run into problems with almost every potential new name I've come up with so far (out of over a hundred), the most common problem being that changing the name to remove the word "Vector" requires a complete rewrite of all story elements and complete redefinition of all in-game elements, as well as alternate explanations as to how certain things exist; changes that could unravel the story and turn it into a mess of plot holes and ridiculousness.

Hiding the word "Vector" has similar problems in that there now has to be a legitimate reason WHY the word is hidden behind a letter. "V-Zone" for instance doesn't make a whole lot of sense from a story perspective because why wouldn't you just call it the "Vectorzone"? Why "V-Zone"? What purpose does calling it this instead serve? (I supposed I could just make a story element in game that the world government went this route due to pressure from various nations but that just seems silly.)

Coming up with acronyms for names has the major problem of intruding upon other companies and software that uses those acronyms. For instance, one of the names I came up with was "Digital Vector Daemon", which unfortunately has the acronym "DVD" and thus there's no way I'd ever get away with that one. I also thought maybe "Digital Vector Arena" would be good, but DVA is not only a stock ticker symbol for a company called DaVita, but it's also the name of another company that's already got dva.com as their website.

I also thought maybe changing the word "vector" to "wireframe" and coming up with a name based on that, but "wireframe" is tricky to say and since many of the shapes have translucent fills it doesn't make a lot of sense.

I even had the thought of picking a completely arbitrary name, drawing inspiration from game names such as "Blaster Master" and "Gradius", games which have virtually nothing to do with their titles, but just have cool-sounding titles, but then I realized part of the reason people don't tend to name things arbitrarily like that is because now you're not giving people an idea of what to expect from the name alone.

HOWEVER...

Despite all of this though, I do have a few name ideas that I haven't completely scratched off the list yet, since they keep "Vectorzone" in the title but simply make the title longer in order to eliminate confusion with anything simply called "Vector". Those titles being:

"The Vectorzone Imperative"
"The Vectorzone Daemon"
"Daemon: Vectorzone"

They're wordy and ugly and would require all new title art, but that's about the extent of what I would have to change. "The Vectorzone Imperative" gets the point across that what the Vectorzone is doing to the world's networks absolutely needs to be responded to. The other two with "Daemon" in the title tie into the strange and unusual nature of how the Vectorzone even exists.

If I do end up having to choose one of those, which do you guys think would work the best?

Just keep calling it vectorzone and worry about problems after they actually happen....

I'm inclined to think you're making a little bit too much out of this.

Gemini000 wrote:

but then I realized part of the reason people don't tend to name things arbitrarily like that is because now you're not giving people an idea of what to expect from the name alone.

I don't understand what you're getting at with this, at all. A title is generally not a remotely useful way to "give people an idea what to expect" and almost never has been. People have named games Zzyzzyxx and Xexex and AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! and everything in between and they did not pick these names expecting that they would give people an idea what to expect! The only thing in my mind that "Vectorzone" conjures up is calculus homework!

Gemini000 wrote:

Coming up with acronyms for names has the major problem of intruding upon other companies and software that uses those acronyms. For instance, one of the names I came up with was "Digital Vector Daemon", which unfortunately has the acronym "DVD" and thus there's no way I'd ever get away with that one. I also thought maybe "Digital Vector Arena" would be good, but DVA is not only a stock ticker symbol for a company called DaVita, but it's also the name of another company that's already got dva.com as their website.

No way? Really?
http://www.acronymfinder.com/DVD.html
http://www.acronymfinder.com/DVA.html

My head hurts.

Jorpho wrote:

I'm inclined to think you're making a little bit too much out of this.

I'm aware of this.

...I honestly can't explain my logic as to why this is such a big deal without ranting for numerous paragraphs on end and I've done enough of that already just trying to explain the BASICS of the situation. I spent the past half hour just now writing a multi-paragraph explanation in the reply box here only to just delete the whole thing because I've ranted enough and this whole situation has me stressed out, frustrated, and on the verge of just giving up because of all the crap the project's gone through already. My game should've been DONE by now, and yet I haven't even started re-coding the simplest things like video initialization. :(

All I can do at this point is hope for the best and plan for the worst, which is why I'm asking for opinions about which of those alternate names would be a good second choice.

Gemini000 wrote:

My game should've been DONE by now, and yet I haven't even started re-coding the simplest things like video initialization. 🙁

It sounds like the classic case of cleaning your room instead of studying, we've all been there. I wrote a "game engine" once and when things got hard I'd start playing around with the name of it too - I do the same thing with my short story writing. It's much harder to finish a thing than it is to start it.

Stop tormenting yourself and decide to either finish it, or shelve it. Either way the name can wait.

Engoo had a similar problem. I made lots of graphical effects for years (colored lighting, textured additive particles with fade, and coronas that fade under models and sprites), and still hadn't solved the 8bpp garbage bug in Windows 7 - WHICH IS THE OS I WAS DEVELOPING IT IN 🙁

Well, I've done some major thinking about the situation... in fact, it's pretty much all I did last night was think about all this.

...I think, regardless of any facts or opinions, the best thing to do is whatever results in the least stress for me while still giving me the challenge of making my game.

To that end, I'm weighing all my options in terms of how to proceed and while I haven't made any firm decisions yet, I think the strongest option at the moment is to retool the game as a whole so that I'm not locked into using the word "vector" in the title.

I'd also like to apologise to anyone who felt this thread was getting a bit too dramatized or over-exaggerated. My only excuse is that I do not handle stress very well and I live my life doing everything I can to avoid stressful situations because of this, which includes preemptively taking actions to prevent undesirable things from potentially happening, even when their odds are small. I thought expressing my concern on here (and Allegro.cc) would help, but it just ended up being me venting which I'm sure many of you didn't really want to listen to. So for that, I'm sorry.