How To Pick a Great Name for Your Game
Your game's title is more important than you might think. Here are five ingredients for a great game name and how you can create yours.
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Games are complex multi-media works of art, containing visuals, sounds, story, interactive elements, and so much more—and somehow you're meant to represent all of that in a title.
At best, a video game title can help sell your game and enrich the overall playing experience, but at worst a title can actually hurt the sales of your game and plunge it into obscurity. Whether you’re a game developer with no idea what to call your game or you already have a title in mind and you want to see how many boxes it checks off, here are five ingredients that make up a great video game title, as well as my method for brainstorming with the best game name ideas for your project.
Five Tips for a Great Video Game Title
1) Make the Title Relevant and Tangible
This tip is two for the price of one! The title of your game should be relevant to the game itself, but since you’re probably not working with a huge marketing budget, it should also be tangible.
What I mean by that is: ideally, when players first read the title of your game, it should tell them something about the game and conjure up an image or feeling in them. This could include hinting at the genre by using a word with close associations with that type of game (i.e.; build, explode, mystery, etc.), or to the setting (i.e.; ocean, dream, abandoned, etc.), or the characters, tone, inspiration, or game mechanics.
Examples from in and outside the gaming industry include:
Star Wars
Fight Club
Game of Thrones
Vampire Survivor
PowerWash Simulator
Hades
Pretend you’ve never heard of those before the titles still give you a decent idea of what to expect. “Star Wars” is probably about epic battles in space, “Game of Thrones” is probably about powerful people competing for more power, and “Hades” probably involves Greek mythology and is maybe inspired by a very popular 1997 action role-playing video game named after a different ruler of the dead.
It’s important to note that when your title is only relevant to your game, it’s just a title, but when it’s relevant to your game and tangible to players, it becomes a marketing tool as well. The difference is this: when I read “Metal Gear Solid” on a PS1 demo disk in 1998, I didn’t know what to think of it even though the game is about the threat of a thing called a Metal Gear, but “Spyro The Dragon” and “Medievil” on the same disc immediately piqued my interest and I played those first.
2) Keep It Short
How long should a video game title be? Short. Like, 1-3 words short. Take a look at all of the examples listed above because I don’t even have to list more to make this point.
You want to keep your video game title short so that it’s easily digestible at a glance, easy to remember, and quick to type into a web search bar. I love a long title as much as the next person when it’s tongue-in-cheek — and that can even work as a marketing tool if the title is so long and fun that it goes viral — but “Cats Fighting Ghosts Back to the Spirit World Every Time Their Owners Aren’t Looking” (a game that doesn’t exist but probably should) is generally best shortened to “Cats Fighting Ghosts,” which still sounds awesome.
3) Consider How It Will Be Abbreviated
Even if you have a title in mind that’s relevant, tangible, and short, this next tip can throw a wrench in your perfect idea — think about how it will be abbreviated. Specifically, think about the game’s initials. Some very, very popular games are commonly referred to by their initials. In fact, I bet you can tell me the title of these games based solely on their initials:
MGS
CoD
GTA
RDR
But when someone tells you they spent the weekend playing BF1 and GoW, did they play “Battlefield 1” and “God of War” or did they play “Battlefront 1” and “Gears of War?” People like to abbreviate things, so it’s best to make your title’s initials just as unique and easy to remember as the title. Also, maybe avoid titles like “Trails in the Sky” that abbreviate to a word that will ping a moderator.
4) Make It Catchy and Clever
This should be a no-brainer, but if you can make the title of your game smart and memorable, do that. Some common techniques to make a catchy and clever game title include:
Alliteration — use multiple words that start with the same letter or sound
Rhyme — incorporate words that sound the same, as long as it’s not confusing
Puns — include words or phrases that have double meanings, but only if both of those meanings are relevant
References — utilize your knowledge of your audience to reference an inside joke or use a term that’s popular in that community
There’s no gauge for how catchy or clever something is, but there is a threshold where something seems like it’s trying to be catchy or clever unsuccessfully. Don’t make this a top priority, but keep your eyes out for opportunities.
5) Optimize It for Search Engines (SEO)
This is the least creative part of naming a game, but it’s essential to consider how search engines (Google, Bing, etc.) will see your game’s title. This is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and basically, it means you want your game to show up as the top result when someone types its title into a web search instead of something totally unrelated. This is partially why so many games have three-word titles — as great as the game (and name) “Hades” is, it will never outrank the underworld king himself. The game only ranks highly at all due to its sheer popularity, which you of course cannot count on.
SEO is also where using words closely associated with your game's genre in the title will come in handy. If someone's a fan of tycoon games and they're wondering if there's a good spiritual successor to RollerCoaster Tycoon 2, they might search for “theme park tycoon,” and see this Roblox game of the same name as the top result, but unfortunately, they will not see Parkitect, which is a standalone and absolutely delightful spiritual successor to RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 that the person might prefer.
Whatever title you’re considering for your video game, type it into a web search to see what else shows up and determine if there’s anything there you’d rather not be associated with. If it’s already used in another context, you can also use Google Trends to compare it with any other titles you’re considering to get an idea of how many people are already searching for any of those terms. From there the choice is yours: a unique title will be easier to rank higher for, but an already popular search term could result in free advertising if you’re able to rank highly enough on the first page of results.
How To Brainstorm Your Game's Name
Despite all the essential ingredients listed above, there's no single recipe for coming up with your game's name. Some developers might start with a great title and build a game around that, some developers might have a great title come to them from seemingly out of nowhere in the middle of development, and some developers might have a fun fully playable build ready and still have no idea what to officially call it.
If you're struggling to think of game name ideas, my recommendation is to start making lists of every word or phrase you can think of related to your game. This could include:
Character names
Themes
Locations
Moods and emotions
Genre-specific terms
Favorite names
Then look in a thesaurus and find alternate words for what you've written down and list those. Once you've got your list(s) pretty long and thorough, start mixing and matching to try and come up with creative ideas. Write every combination that comes to you down, even if you know it's terrible — even terrible ideas can lead to great ones. Look for the above five essential ingredients in your combinations, though just because one has more doesn't necessarily make it better. Go with your gut just as much as your head. Hopefully, something you come up with will stick out as the obvious winner, though I can say from personal experience that it may take a while.
Do you have any questions, other essential ingredients, brainstorming methods, or examples of great game titles? Leave a comment!