There’s this old joke in computer science that the two hardest problems in computer science are:
- Cache Validation
- Naming Things
- Off-By-One Errors
I don’t know Cache validation well, but I do know the challenge of naming things. Naming things in games, naming characters in books, naming games themselves. These things are damned hard and of late, some have really been worrying at the back of my mind.
There’s this tryptich of games, Arkham Horror, Eldritch Horror, and Elder Sign. These are all games from the basically same root. They share a bunch of components and ideas, and they even share some of those components’ names. This means if you play Arkham Horror there’s a nonzero chance you’ll be confused by rules in Eldritch Horror because they’re named the same thing. Elder Sign is wildly different, except it uses similar names for some of its events, as a reference, despite being a much smaller game than the others.
And look at those names. Would you know that Elder Sign relates to the others? Would you be able to easily remember which of Arkham and Eldritch Horror was which?! And these are problems that are basically impossible to solve: Too similar and they confuse. Too different and they seem unrelated. Too similar and they feel repetitive. Too different and they feel like change for change’s sake. And there is literally no satisfactory place to stand.
We all look at the world in our own ways, and getting people to use the nomenclature you use is a way to try and hold up your own lenses to someone else’s eyes to get them to see what you’re showing. D&D statistics use general, broad Latin-related root words (Charisma, Intelligence, Dexterity, Constitution) to convey details about the self, but Strength stands out as one of the more obvious ones. The names you give game components and names you give games are part of the text of those games, part of what shapes what they say.
I have a game I’ve been sitting on for about two months. It’s complete. It can be played. It works. It’s a good little game to play between rounds of things, it teaches a good mechanical principle, and it’s very cute. I like it a lot. I want to put it out there.
I am totally fucked at coming up for a name for it.
The game is about defrauding a monster king of pies and cakes, in the hopes of profiting yourself ahead of the other players. At first it went by the name The Fantabulous Kitchens of Emperor Crunch, which was a standin name that stuck for a few weeks because well what else do you call it. Then a concerted effort to change it tried a few variants, none of which satisfied. Last night I sat down and tried to come up with alternatives, one of which was Pie Crimes And Misdemeanours. Brilliant, I thought.
So I ran it past Fox.
She had no idea what it was referencing.
So I ran it past Twitter.
Twitter didn’t seem to really know what it was referencing.
And that put me into another weird space. Because I’m referencing terms I heard growing up. Except my parents are an older generation than most of my friends, and most of my friends themselves are obviously not of my parents’ generation. When my Dad went to school, he had to learn latin and use an inkwell – and that shows in how he talked, the things he referenced, the jokes he made, and those in turn influenced me. He was in the Army, so he has a different mental toolset as well. Time to time I’ll use a turn of phrase and be mocked by Fox for how arcane that knowledge is.
Now then we lead to the next contention: Where do we compromise between self-expression and audience identification? I’ve put out a lot of games now, and most of them are designed with someone else in mind, with the hope of holding up a lens and letting strangers see something of someone I care about. But that lens is shaped by me – and what I lived through and where I came from.
Do I call the game Pie Crimes and deal with the fact most people won’t get the joke? Do I search for a name most people would ‘get’ even if I don’t ‘get’ it? Is that asking to seem artificial? Where do we get our lenses crafted?
I don’t have a good answer, mind you. Just the same general angst about feeling alien.