Whats in a name? UPDATE: Major Excitement

Now that I have a working, solid framework of the games mechanics (WOW took just over two months of solid work to get a playable idea base down) I have cracked open the iPhone SDK (hence known as "THE BEAST") and started trying to actually code basics together. But that is far too early to mention anything landmark or even tangible, other than the process has begun and full steam ahead (maybe later this week I can have something to show off). Don't worry though, I will still post expanded musings on different mechanics that I haven't fully combed over (here's looking at you nation morale).

Also this week marks the start of my companion paper. I some times forget that this is still a school project due March 17th, and so I really need a paper going along with this blog, and everything else I have done. I hope to come up with a solid outline, however as that isn't directly related to this blog I will only be posting select experts that pertain to the development cycle.

However here is something that I have been working on trying to figure out since the project began: What should it be called?

A name is its brand, this is something that you have to have a good hook, it is the first thing people really see when looking at the product (along with the icon) and it needs to represent while not falling flat or sounding contrived. Knowing this I took a look at what I mainly wanted to portray:

• It is about growing a nation from the beginning of time 
• It is about shrewd diplomacy 
• It is about conquest

So what might be a perfect name? Instantly "Rise of Nations" popped into my head. "Perfect" I thought to myself... only there was one problem. It was created by Microsoft Game Studios in 2003. That lead to my discovery of problem number two in creating a clever, interesting name: it cannot be something someone else already thought was super clever and interesting.

Bummer.

So back to the drawing board I went. Between batting things around with other people a bunch of names were produced:

• Nations of Glory
• State of Agenda
• National Conquest
• Conquest of Nations
• Nations of Conquest
• War and Conquest
• Radical Alliances
• Histophillia
• Histocracy

And a dozen more that I felt didn't really fit the mood of the project. After the long weekend of intense debate I felt "Histocracy" was the best choice. It is short, unique, clever, and mixes history with government. It also checked out with google as not having existed as some important big trademarked project. I quickly jumped at this opportunity to begin to lock down my new IP, registering the domain names histocracy.net and histocracygame.com to both point to the same url (these will go live hopefully later today once my FTP access unbreaks, the one time I need it working of course).

An important moment in my game's life has just been reached, and I feel renewed, revitalized, reenergized, and all sorts of other "re" feelings!

UPDATE: The site is now live with a very basic teaser. This is exciting it is like a real life project! Please tell me what you like more: histocracy.net or histocracygame.com for the site URL.