Yet Another Generic Name: Mayhem Intergalactic in Off Topic

ID:29497
 
Apr 13 2007, 5:23 am (Edited on Apr 13 2007, 5:41 am)
Keywords: yagsacg

Poll: Is "Mayhem Intergalactic" a good new name for YAGSCG?

Awesome! Definitely use it! 12% (5)
It's good enough. 12% (5)
It's OK, but I prefer the old name. 37% (15)
I don't like it. 17% (7)
TERRIBLE! Any name but that! 20% (8)

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It all started when Mayhem Intergalactic, a wholly owned subsidiary of Holdings (Holdings) Holdings Pty Ltd, released their new DIY warship: The THUNDERSHIP 12000. ("It slices! It dices! It launches thermonuclear warheads! Some assembly may be required.") As the glossy company brochure pointed out, the warship's low construction costs and high destructive power made it an attractive investment for any decently-sized planetary dictatorship.

Naturally, everyone wanted one; so governments all across the galaxy bought the blueprints and slashed health and education funding in a mad rush to construct as many of the new wonder-machines as they could. Mayhem Intergalactic was only too happy to oblige.

Having assembled all of this cheap military hardware, dictators across the galaxy reasoned that the logical next step was to use it. Thus the First Galactic War began...

I found this old backstory sitting around on my hard drive and the company name "Mayhem Intergalactic" jumped out at me. What do you reckon?

If you don't like the name, or the backstory, please leave a comment saying why that is. =)

Beta testers: Beta 9 is out! Check your email or the guild forum.
#1 Apr 13 2007, 6:54 am
Well, YAGSACG, or MI, doesn't really need a back story, it's like giving checkers a backstory.But as a name, it isn't too bad. It doesn't flow off the tongue very well, but then, it is solely a Internet distributed and marketed game, so it probably doesn't need to be easy to pronounce, YAHSACG surely didn't roll off the tongue with ease.

Intergalactic Mayhem sounds good, or perhaps name it after that Beasty Boys' song, Intergalactic Planetary. Oh great, now that song is going to be stuck in my head all day. Thanks a lot Crispy.
#2 Apr 13 2007, 8:07 am
I like the name, but it strikes me as very generic...

I also think the same of the other names that have come up during this epic discussion (like "Stellar Showdown" or a variant thereof)

Why? Because I can imagine seeing an entire shelf full of games that have those sorts of names, and they completely blend together... It sort of recalls the names of old Atari games... "Chopper Command", "Missile Command", "Pole Position", "Moon Patrol", "River Raid", "Space Invaders", etc... While most of these are excellent games, remembered fondly as classics, and probably stood out well enough back in their day, just imagine going into GameStop and seeing a shelf of games with those titles... They'll all just seem so bland...

It sort of makes me think of them in the way I think of those bagged generic cereal knock-offs... They seem sort of second rate (even if said generic cereals are essentially the same as their brand name counterparts)

Though the juxtaposition of "Mayhem Intergalactic" puts it a step up from the more generic "Intergalactic Mayhem", it's still borderline to me (plus, it seems sort of forced... like a guy on the board said "Intergalactic Mayhem" and then one of the other suits went, "but wait, if we switch the words, it will be 'elite', as the kids say!")

Of course my own "Murder Mansion" is pretty hum-drum, so I haven't practiced what I preach...lol
#3 Apr 13 2007, 11:25 am
I won't stop pushing this.

Yet Another Generic Space-Age Conquest Game has CLASS.
#4 Apr 13 2007, 12:46 pm
I like it. It doesn't have the tangy zing of YAGSACG, but it sounds pretty cool to me.

I don't see where people are getting the derivative-sounding part of it. I think it sounds unique in its own right -- the Romantic grammar gives it a unique character (Romantic as in "object adjective", e.g., "meurtre cruel", as opposed to the Germanic "adjective object", e.g., "foul murder").
#5 Apr 13 2007, 2:43 pm
Vacuum Violence

Antagonistic Aliens

Evil Extraterrestrials

Space Spat

Ballisitic Bickering
#6 Apr 13 2007, 6:29 pm
Danial.Beta wrote:
Intergalactic Mayhem sounds good, or perhaps name it after that Beasty Boys' song, Intergalactic Planetary. Oh great, now that song is going to be stuck in my head all day. Thanks a lot Crispy.

Haha. :-)

I thought of switching the words around to form Intergalactic Mayhem, but it sounded too generic to me without being "backwards". Anyway, Intergalactic Mayhem has been used before.

Of course the game doesn't need a back story, but having one tucked away in a corner of the website won't hurt it. And it provides justification for why the name is "backwards"; it's a company name, with "Intergalactic" sort-of-evoking "Incorporated".

I'm leaning heavily towards MI at the moment.
#7 Apr 13 2007, 11:05 pm
You shouldnt be so hung up over the name. A really good game like this one will sell practically sell itself.
#8 Apr 14 2007, 1:54 am
Names are important... you can have the best game in the world, but nobody will check it out if the first impression is bad. So the name at least needs to be passable.

I agree, though, that this has gone on too long. So I'm just going to go with MI I think (despite the apparent lack of enthusiasm).
#9 May 6 2007, 1:18 pm
"Mayhem Intergalactic" sounds backwards, but "Intergalactic Mayhem" describes the game pretty well.
#10 May 6 2007, 4:54 pm
Shadow, the backwardness was intentional. He wanted it to stand out, so someone running through a list of games would have that catch their eye, because it didn't flow like expected. I still prefer the old name, but the new one isn't bad.