(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?
--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- Pixelmusement Website: www.pixelships.com
--- Ancient DOS Games Webshow: www.pixelships.com/adg