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[Xion]

One of the main reasons I want to make a game all by myself is so that for the credits I can use one of my many names for each position and make it look like a team of different people made it.

And I think name "pseudonym" name only works if the pseudonym starts with "The-".

Like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
Or John "The Miracle" Miral

[december]

And I think name "pseudonym" name only works if the pseudonym starts with "The-".

Like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
Or John "The Miracle" Miral

Ahem.

B. Elaine "extra-bastard formula" Watts representing uih

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

One of the main reasons I want to make a game all by myself is so that for the credits I can use one of my many names for each position and make it look like a team of different people made it.

Mary Hinge,
Betty Swallocks,
etc

[Eclipse]

"Hayden Scott-Baron (Better known as Dock..)"

  :D

[KennEH!]

What so bad with using a pseudonym? Personally I think they are pretty cool.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Nothing really wrong with it. It's just that to many people, it makes you sound like a kid. Like, imagine Valve getting this email:

Hi, I want my game on steam.

I remain,
rinkuhero

Actually, I should try that :D

[KennEH!]

Nothing really wrong with it. It's just that to many people, it makes you sound like a kid. Like, imagine Valve getting this email:

Hi, I want my game on steam.

I remain,
rinkuhero

Actually, I should try that :D

I'm sure everyone treated Saki like a kid too.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

He only published under an alias because he was afraid his public reputation would be ruined by his stories! Not really a good analogy.

[KennEH!]

Yeah but still no one thought of him as a kid for usuing it.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Maybe. I wouldn't find it surprising if his friends and family made fun of the name, though. Plus, that was a different time. Today, if you use a name other than your real name on the internet in professional correspondence, people will likely assume you're a kid, especially if it's something like ImTheManDawg and all the other crazy internet names people use.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

(I just made that name up, btw -- if there's actually someone with that name, and there probably is, I didn't mean to single them out.)

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

I'm sure everyone treated Saki like a kid too.

Who is 'Saki' ? The fact that I can't google for him is a good argument against nicknames like this.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

You can, this is the first result: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saki

But I do think you have a point, screen names are harder to google for than given names, unless it's a really common given name that you share with people more famous than you are (pity the fool whose given name is James Smith).

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

"dock" for instance is impossible to google. It'll just bring up a bunch of docks.

[Lord Tim]

I've been fairly lucky so far, and it turned out that "Lord Tim" hasn't been taken on any of the places I go. Tim is my real first name, and so far I've tried my best to keep my actual identity seperate from my gaming circles, though I suspect it wouldn't take that long to find. Were I to start actually making some real games, though, I would probably start using my real name as well.

Unfortunately, I am not yet popular enough to rank higher on Google than the other "Lord Tim"s.

[mrfredman]

I too have a very googleable online name, (the second hit for mrfredman is my tigsource profile (somehow my last.fm account takes the top spot), and a very ungoogle-able real name, I don't surface anywhere in the first few pages when I try my name. So when it comes to promoting myself online, I think it would be a very unwise move to try and convert to my real name at this point.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I'm the first result for both rinkuhero and Paul Eres, and even in the top 30 for just Eres, so I'm fine.

[Hideous]

I'm the first result for Andreas Jörgensen (that's my Swedish Game Awards profile), but definitely not for Hideous.

[ShawnF]

All else being equal, I think it's definitely better to stick with your real name.  It gives you more legitimacy with the press, with portals, with options like XBLA, and if you ever decide to get into normal big budget retail games, then it could come in handy to have all your work attached to your legal name.  It's also nice if you're like me and you're in the kind of position I'm in, where you work on games as your day job, but you're trying to break into the indie world... it keeps all your gaming-related work in one place so that it's easier to find.

Which is weird, because I'm not all that proud of some of the games I've worked on, but somehow the type of people that look at this stuff always seem to care more about quantity than quality.

[Jóhannes G.]

I switched from my online nick to my real name a year or two ago. It was quite hard to let go but I must tell you. It is a good idea. You might want to keep your old nick (or whatever nick you like) for projects were you want to be anonymous. (many writers do that)