"Aeternum Studios - we take forever to develop a game"
The last two posters raise good points. People being able to spell/pronounce your company name is important.
However I don''t agree that you should name a company for the genre you intend to follow because you can''t be sure that that is where you will end up. Smoking Gun Productions was set up to do adventures. There was a long list of genres and at the bottom was the one they never wanted to work on (Soccer Management). You can guess what they are working on can''t you?
We have formed our company for the reasons I described above. It exists only for those reasons. If we cannot develop products to those specifications, then we won''t be in business.
Fortunately, being a non-profit development company also means that our overhead is very low.. so we''re not out much more than the cost of web hosting if it takes us a year, or ten years, to develop the product we want to develop.
As for the name, you may be right.. but then again, names that people can spell easily are very hard to find domain names for. Better aeternumstudios.com than some-cliche-company-name.us, in my opinion.
I agree with downgraded. Look at Westwood Studios for example. Talk about a dull name but the C&C franchise makes it shine. One thing to bare in mind is that you will (hopefully) have to answer the phone every day and say "xxxx studios". A name you can say without feeling stupid would be a good move.
Also make sure you can get a web address for your name. We were going to choose Liquid Crystal Studios and realized we couldn''t get www.liquidcrystal.com. Even after settling on Elysian Productions Inc. we realised that www.elysianproductions.com and www.elysian.com were taken. We used www.elysianonline.com and went with the name.
Elysian refers to the greek field where heros went to die. Its a place of honor where soldiers would be remembered for years to come. Russel Crowe mentions it in Gladiator, though he uses the word Elysium which if I remember correctly is a alternate name for the Elysian Fields. The word elysian also means beautiful, peaceful, heavenly... Since we''re in the business of creating persistent worlds it seems to fit both our take on the company and the products were setting out to build which is a boon.
Kressilac
Derek Licciardi (Kressilac)Elysian Productions Inc.
> I think the products released by a company speak louder than it''s name
A company can have many brands (or franchises) and those brands can take different lifes, die and even ressusitate (take Tron 2.0 and Prince of Persia as examples) while the company names can change during corporate mergers, reorgs, IP buyouts, etc. Make the two as separate entities; there are legal as well as marketing advantages.
Take a company name than represents something you stand for if you can, then pick separate IP brand names according to their gameplay value or genre. Fun names are cool, but as stated above, too long or too complex and you can''t remember the company name no more, or worse it sounds too childish to trust a publisher contract with.
quote:
Original post by irbrian a name that (hopefully) reflects our desire to develop products that have a lasting impact on the industry, in terms of story, scope, emotion, message, and so forth.
Why don't you call it Everlasting Studios?
It would fit perfectly your description, and it sounds pretty well.
-------------------------------------------- "I've never dared handle it, but I've seen it. Felt its power. Christ the Man Jesus help me, I have Black Thirteen under the floorboards of my church. And it's come alive!"
Oh and my website www.blossomsoft.com
[edited by - BlackThirteen on April 14, 2004 9:53:56 PM]
