All About Titles: Odd Words

In the last All About Titles article, I discussed the important of keywords. Keywords are handy because they have a whole host of connotations attached to them which can easily grab a person's attention. Unfortunately, they are also a bit on the bland side on their own, so you need something more 'unique' to compliment them. Therefore, today's installment of All About Titles will cover some of the more common types of 'odd words'.

Scientific Name: This is surprisingly common in the indie community, but far more rare in games with bigger budgets. Although this is a popular trend, it is generally a horrible name choice for anything other than an 'art game' simply because it sounds 'artsy'. For example, if you have an action platformer where you use a plasma gun to fight off an army of evil alien toads, it would be a really bad idea to name it Bufonophobia (fear of toads) as people looking for an art game will be disappointed while others will pass it by because it sounds like an art game. While such a name may catch the eye, it is neither catchy nor does it give any clues at to what the nature of the game is as, even if someone knows what the name means, it will have no connotations attached to it in the gaming world. To top it all off, it is unlikely that a person will simply stumble upon the name while trying to search for a different game, further reducing visibility. Avoid this.

Odd Name: Unlike a scientific name, an odd name in the title can do wonders for drawing attention to a game. This involves using an exotic or outright made-up name of a protagonist/planet/item/etc in the name of your game. Using this alone is usually a bad idea, but it can really make your game stand out in addition to giving some information and raising curiosity. An obvious example of this would be The Legend of Zelda; we all know who Zelda is now, but when the game first came out the title likely caused quite a stir. Legend implies adventure and myth, what is so wondrous about this 'Zelda' person that she has a legend? Is Zelda the protagonist? Zelda is a female name, but it's an uncommon one, so what's the setting? Such a title combines the familiar with the exotic and raises curiosity while still keeping things simple and catchy; The Legend of Zelda is easily one of the best titles out there and is a great model to base your own title off of.

Uncommon Word: This is another good option for your title. Specifically, this refers to a word which people are probably familiar with, but which they probably don't see on a daily basis. This gives your game a unique name while still not completely confusing. The name of this blog is an example of this, with the uncommon word 'Penultimate' and the common word 'Boss'. The Ambitions of Quamuza is yet another example, although it is one of how not to use uncommon words; 'ambitions' is an uncommon word which helps to draw attention and Quamuza is an exotic-sounding 'odd name', but there are no keywords, which makes it unlikely that the game will come up in searches and gives possible players little indication as to what it is (and when a person is looking through a list of several hundred or several thousand games, they'll probably only stop at games which give at least some indication via the title).

In short, avoid using a 'scientific name' for your title, but using an odd name and/or an uncommon word is great as long as it has at least one common, familiar keyword to compliment it.