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[SouldomainTM]

Hello,

I was wondering about name attachments like "Games" or "Entertainment". For company names like Runic Games or Blizzard Entertainment it makes sense to me. But for my own business I rather not append something like that because it just gets too long.

Is there a legal requirement or benefit for this? Because if not then I just kick it.

[Sik]

There isn't as far as I know, it's generally used just to get the point across.

EDIT: also, if your name is just a standard noun, adding something like that may be the difference between making it trademarkable or not (e.g. I doubt "Blizzard" alone would be easy to tradermark, and before somebody mentions the Apple case, remember that Apple had lots of trouble with it).

[SouldomainTM]

Thanks, Sik. This makes the naming easier.

[Müsta Klaki]

It's used by people who want to seem way more professional than they already are. Then they can say they're the CEO/President/Founder/FuckingEverythingBecauseImTheOnlyOneInThisDevTeam.

I'm also fairly certain every indie team that calls themselves a Studio are really unprofessional, considering that a studio is a development team owned by a publisher, whilst to be indie you need to have no publisher.

[Sik]

Some people think that a studio is just a game development team, so if you go by that definition technically you don't need to be owned by anybody to be a studio (although it does get awkward if your company manages to grow big enough to end up spawning multiple teams).

[knifeySpoonie]

I think the majority of these companies do it for clarity... If you saw a company called Blizzard you might think a winter sports manufacturer or a Air conditionioning firm... It's not vital but in general it just adds that clear and defined structure to a more abstract name.

[Columbo]

From an indie point of view, if your name is a single english word, then you have to append something, otherwise you'll never get the website/twitter/facebook accounts, and you'll be ungoogleable. We'd never have got tundra.com, we're quite happy with tundragames.com.

If your name is elaborate enough already that you're googleable and can get the website, then I see no advantage to a postfix of games, entertainment, studios, etc. Especially if there's a hint of gaminess in your name (splash damage, twisted pixel, 2D Boy, etc)

[MorganRamsay]

Is there a legal requirement or benefit for this? Because if not then I just kick it.

There are a few reasons, of which all revolve around money. The most important reason has to do with brand architecture.

Most video game companies have what are called "pluralistic" brand architectures. This means that video game brands (e.g., Age of Empires) are far more visible and important than the corporate brands (e.g., Ensemble Studios) and that the corporate brands are largely irrelevant to customers. In Frank N. Magid Associates' study for the MI6 Game Marketing Conference in 2006, the report suggested that this is the case: most players don't really care who makes the games they buy. Consequently, you can name your parent brand anything and still run a successful business as long as your video game brands are recognizable. Other architectures are at least doubly expensive, requiring you to spend on building and managing two brands instead of one.

[SouldomainTM]

most players don't really care who makes the games they buy.

I'm not surprised about this. Just all we need to do now is, to go to Ubisoft and especially EA, and tell them that their logos at the start of their games, are utterly pointless. I mean those logos can't be skipped. And but why should they be skipped? For instance, Electronic Arse does make such great games... right?

There is one developer I know of who shows their logo at first game startup only. I think they are the illuminated ones, but people know them as pandas and orcs. And like in a miracle, people even happen to remember their name. I think they are called Severe Snowstorm Entertainment. 

[Columbo]

To be fair, most games are frantically loading in the background while they play their pointless logos and splash screens and legal screens.

DVDs on the other hand, drive me absolutely insane, especially the anti-piracy bits which just feel like punishment for not pirating (I assume the junk is removed or at least skippable on pirated copes).

[Sik]

To be fair, most games are frantically loading in the background while they play their pointless logos and splash screens and legal screens.

Yep, this is pretty much the whole reason behind making the logo screens unskippable, they're there to hide loading screens (it's much faster to load a bunch of logos than to load the whole engine, and there are strict limitations on how long a game is allowed to look idle when booting). On the flipside, Half-Life 2 still takes its sweet time to load the title screen without a logo (the Valve logo can be skipped) -.-;

This is also why logos were skippable in older games, they literally were doing nothing then. The only reason to make them unskippable was lawyers being lawyers (which is why they were usually unskippable on licensed games, which also generally had screen-sized copyright notices instead of just the logos)

[Chad]

In our case, we only tacked on the "Games" to some of our URLs because couldn't get BinarySolo on Twitter or Facebook. If you're just starting, just do some due diligence make sure you can grab the relevant websites and social media accounts you will want.

[SouldomainTM]

DVDs on the other hand, drive me absolutely insane, especially the anti-piracy bits which just feel like punishment for not pirating (I assume the junk is removed or at least skippable on pirated copes).

This kind of spamming on DVDs is most likely removed in pirated versions, as far as I know. I think they only download the movie itself and not the entire DVD or Blu-Ray disk. I'm not a pirate though. So yeah, I have to wonder myself now about the point of these notices since actual pirates probably never see this.

A few days ago I bought a movie on iTunes. It doesn't have ads, or any kind of notices. Its a Marvel movie by the way, and when watching a Marvel movie you might not want to stop the movie at the end when the credits start rolling... 

[Sik]

This kind of spamming on DVDs is most likely removed in pirated versions, as far as I know. I think they only download the movie itself and not the entire DVD or Blu-Ray disk. I'm not a pirate though. So yeah, I have to wonder myself now about the point of these notices since actual pirates probably never see this.

People pirate the DVD images themselves (since they have more than just a raw movie so a single video won't do) but yeah, those images have those screens removed anyway. In the end the legit customer gets annoyed while pirates get a better experience. Good job! They think it helps their PR though!

[Muz]

Don't do it if you don't have to. It's not like all companies do something like Microsoft Electronics, Intel Microprocessors, Nike Shoes. The shorter the better.