Good one.
The thing with naming your game is that it's kind of hard to give general advice about it; it's one of those things that you know it's right when you hear it. Also, it seems that games with really generic titles, like Total War or Final Fantasy, don't seem to suffer immensely for being unoriginal, and weird and non-descriptive ones also generally are fine, so I'm not sure how important titles are anyway. Is there a way to ascertain that a game would have sold better had it had a better title? Not sure.
As you said, the change from God's Algorithm to Whispers of a Machine is a pretty big change, but it was like a bandaid that had to ripped off quickly - the longer we'd hesitate, the harder would it be to change it. In terms of actual title power - originality etc - the former might be stronger, but it also is less relevant to the actual game, so, yeah.
The trick to subtly include the title - or a reference to it - in your game can be cool, but sometimes it can come across as clichéd and forced. I loved the title "Gemini Rue" until there was this dialogue snippet along the lines of "he doesn't have to live this life of rue any longer", which seemed utterly shoe-horned in and a bit cheesy. It just doesn't seem like a thing you'd say unless you really wanted to use that exact word.
I'm extremely satisfied with the title The Samaritan Paradox, to the point that it might be the best aspect of the game - too good for the game, almost. Awww.
A Golden Wake is a superb title, in every way. Shardlight slightly less so, because it struck me as pretty apparent from the outset that the shards were basically painted as cool lighting effects (the kind of lighting Ben is known to use in his art), and they might not be essential enough to the game to be the basis of its title. But that's just my two cents.
Looking forward to the big 100!
The thing with naming your game is that it's kind of hard to give general advice about it; it's one of those things that you know it's right when you hear it. Also, it seems that games with really generic titles, like Total War or Final Fantasy, don't seem to suffer immensely for being unoriginal, and weird and non-descriptive ones also generally are fine, so I'm not sure how important titles are anyway. Is there a way to ascertain that a game would have sold better had it had a better title? Not sure.
As you said, the change from God's Algorithm to Whispers of a Machine is a pretty big change, but it was like a bandaid that had to ripped off quickly - the longer we'd hesitate, the harder would it be to change it. In terms of actual title power - originality etc - the former might be stronger, but it also is less relevant to the actual game, so, yeah.
The trick to subtly include the title - or a reference to it - in your game can be cool, but sometimes it can come across as clichéd and forced. I loved the title "Gemini Rue" until there was this dialogue snippet along the lines of "he doesn't have to live this life of rue any longer", which seemed utterly shoe-horned in and a bit cheesy. It just doesn't seem like a thing you'd say unless you really wanted to use that exact word.
I'm extremely satisfied with the title The Samaritan Paradox, to the point that it might be the best aspect of the game - too good for the game, almost. Awww.
A Golden Wake is a superb title, in every way. Shardlight slightly less so, because it struck me as pretty apparent from the outset that the shards were basically painted as cool lighting effects (the kind of lighting Ben is known to use in his art), and they might not be essential enough to the game to be the basis of its title. But that's just my two cents.
Looking forward to the big 100!
