I’ve been working on my game for about 3 months now and I have yet to come up with a suitable name for it. I’ve been referring to it mainly as “My Game” since it’s really my first game project to make it this far. But I have given it a code name which I will use to refer to it when posting here, and that code name is Nano. This comes from the setting of the game which I’ll discuss more in a future post but suffice to say, nano technology plays an important roll in the setting.
How to Brainstorm Names
I came up with Robot Monkey Brain during a few short brainstorming sessions with a pal of mine. It’s real important to have someone to bounce ideas off of, and when brainstorming it’s best if there aren’t any negative judgments about ideas. Just get a couple of people to start spouting out names and phrases and follow the good ideas, building on them but feel free to jump tracks if one path is getting stale. We were hovering around the words Robot and Monkey since I’m a big fan of robotics and my online handle has included a misspelling of the word monkey since I was a freshman in high school. Once you find a good one make sure it isn’t taken:
- Search the name, see if the name already has some pop culture weight around it.
- See if the domain is taken. You want the .com extension unless you’re outside the US and don’t plan on making your game available internationally.
- Check if there is already a Facebook page and twitter account using that name.
- If all those things are clear, snatch up the domain, Facebook page and twitter name.
I kinda screwed up the twitter part in that RobotMonkeyBrain is 1 letter too long to be a twitter handle, so I had to go with @RoboMonkeyBrain. It’s not the end of the world but the OCD part of me would prefer all the names match and I do have the Robot Monkey Brain Facebook Page all set.
I’ll go through the same process when I’m ready to give an official name to Nano, but I still need to develop more of the core systems and setting details before I set that in stone.