Let's just be glad video games aren't named like manga/anime are and we have "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" instead of "I slept for 100 years after the world was destroyed and now have to face the demon king".

FALL.

Because now you can build it into a franchise. Intergalactic: <INSERT_TITLE>

I asked GameDiscoverCo founder Simon Carless

Talking about names, that is a very Unamerican family name.

Horizon : Zero Dawn is a terrible title. Zero Dawn is only marginally better.

Wild Hearts and Sayonara Wild Hearts are not in the same series. Tales of Zau is not a part of the Tales of Series. Just look at how many games are Z something or something Z.

Why bother with reinventing the title wheel when you can just hope that you'll have a subset of buyers that purchase expecting a different level of quality?

Duskbloods is the new FromSoftware game, so there's no chance anyone will forget that.

Oof, I had already forgotten it before they mentioned FromSoftware. It sounds like a teenage vampire drama...

Duskfade is a perfectly pleasant 3D platformer with Kingdom Hearts-style combat that came out a couple of months ago. Once I've finished typing this paragraph, however, it will once again erase itself from my memory, because there's nothing evocative about the name.

I feel that says more about the game than the name. Like I find (scrolls through Steam library) Bullet Witch is a more memorable name than say Portal, but I can tell you a hell of a lot more about the latter.

"Beyond that—I actually think that naming isn't that important, since most people buy a game based on video footage, someone else playing it, or a recommendation. And we've seen in music and elsewhere that weird names are in no way a blocker to becoming successful." Carless cites Steely Dan and Bananarama as examples.

Do people really look at the videos on Steam? I always immediately click past them to look at the images.

Failbetter's next game is called Mandrake—the result of lots of collaborative longlisting, Flynn says. As well as encapsulating horticultural and sorcerer-type themes, it's the name of the game's main character.

This would be like if Esoteric Ebb called itself 'Cleric', though given Wizards of the Coast is publishing a game called 'Warlock: Dungeon & Dragons' I suppose it wouldn't be that out there.

Good article though.

"Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines" would like to have a word.

I gotta be honest though. Neither of those names strike as particularly bad. JRPGs are way worse (not even mentioning mobile games).

A distinctive name only helps if people can remember its spelling. I'd rather have a short, searchable title than another pair of generic fantasy words.

Horizon: Zero Dawn should have just been called Zero Dawn.

It should have been "Horizon." That's the game's series title. And since it was the first one, it didn't need a subtitle at all.

Also, in the first paragraph it seems like the author is confused by words that are just a bit similar and not even the same since they are mixing together games with "dusk" in the title and games with "dust" in the title.

Most game name are uninspired and forgettable on its own. The success and being popular makes them so memorable. Classics like Super Mario World wasn't particular inspired name at the time it came out. Super Metroid or many other Super games had this issue. The games itself made the names unforgettable, not the name.