Our newest game is about a lost expeditionary group who goes in search of mysterious meteorite shards. They’re followed by another expedition that also goes missing, though they survive long enough to send some information to the main characters, each of whom decide to venture to Tunguska on their own expedition.
Hence the name Expeditions.
Perhaps this may seem like too obvious or too common of a name to use for a game, though we went through the full name selection process and determined that it checked the boxes (legality, searchability, spellability) better than the other names we brainstormed, and it left the most flexibility for an expansion in a different area of the 1920+ world.
However, the game was actually called Expedition (singular) up until September of 2022. That’s when I was reading through Essen Spiel announcements and saw that a game called Expedition was releasing at the fair:
Admittedly, there were other games by this name on BoardGameGeek, but none with more than a few ratings over the last 20+ years. But when I saw this from Korea Board Games–a publisher we happen to work with–I decided that we needed to change the name. Fortunately, Expeditions (plural) is a better name for the theme of our game.
Flash forward to January 31, the day before we’re announcing Expeditions. I’m scrolling through Instagram, and guess what I see?
At this point, we’re a month into production–there’s no changing the name. The final name of our game is Expeditions. So I reached out to Super Meeple to let them know about the February 1 announcement. I didn’t ask them to change anything; rather, it was just a courtesy to a fellow publisher to let them know that we also have an upcoming game by that name. They replied with consideration, and I think they might add a subtitle.
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Could all of this have been avoided by a little less secrecy on my part? Absolutely. But I try to respect the integrity of BoardGameGeek by not logging a game there until I can enter only final information about the game (opposed to trying to “reserve” a name there during the design process when many elements are still in flux). I have a feeling that most publishers do the same. Plus, publishers don’t typically announce a new game until they at least have a final box image to share.
This isn’t even to mention the trademark process, which adds a legal foundation well above and beyond claiming a name on BGG. Plus, the trademark registration process takes months.
You can see the problem here: At any given time, multiple publishers could easily be working on games with identical names, and they won’t realize the overlap until they’ve already gone to print.
Other than revealing your game name as soon as the box is ready, I don’t see any viable solutions for this problem. Even then, it can lead to frustrations, as you can get really attached to a name during the development process. Perhaps the lesson there (for myself) is to not get too attached to a name.
UPDATE: In the comments, people suggested using multiple words or unusual, fictional, or hybrid words, reducing the chances that someone else has created the same name.
Have any fellow creators/publishers run into this issue? Am I missing a solution? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
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72 Comments on “The Gold Rush for Game Names”
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Thanks for the article! I hear you, Jamey. When I found out there was a Darkholds game I changed the name of my game Darkhold to Darkhold: Prelude To Apocalypse, to avoid confusion. I’ve used the name Darkhold for decades in the game universe: Toonaria (and Marvel used it even longer, I discovered.) Still, with so much history I wasn’t about to change that part. I think it should be fine with the singular and tagline.
I’ve changed the name of a bigger IP before. Back in 1978, I created the Stargate universe (there were stargates all over, linking worlds) and made an rpg called Stargate. Time passed and the first Stargate movie came out. To avoid brand confusion I changed the name of the game slightly to Stargate: Cosmothea. Then another movie and series came out showing that their first movie had become a thing, so I sadly changed the name of my long-running game to simply Cosmothea and the universe to Cosmoverse to further remove confusion. It was a sad time, but they’d beat me to the big times, not chronologically, but in popularity.
I come up with the name of a game usually on the first day and it rarely changes, but those are two examples of where it was best to change it.
Of course, other industries also come into play, but I usually don’t worry about them too much as they aren’t competing products. For example, with my Midnight Guardians game I don’t have any books out on the game and won’t using that name, as I discovered there is a book series called Midnight Guardians. I’m not about to change the name of my game for that. After all, Midnight Guardians, like every game I create is part of my much bigger and older Toonaria universe. I’m not changing my universe! When I want to make a game, I snag a story from my universe. Everything’s interconnected. That doesn’t mean I can’t change the name of a game, but I don’t want to change the name of an in universe concept, so it’s tricky.
Great article! At what point in the design process does it make sense to trademark your boardgame name? Bringing it to my first gaming convention later this months!
Daniel: If you’re submitting the game to publishers, don’t trademark the name at all. If you’re self-publishing, you can start the trademark process as early as you’d like. :)
I found a similar issue when self publishing a book but the fix was far easier since I could adjust much faster and without the constraints you face.
One simple but effective method could be adding “The” in front of it.
“The Expeditions”
Doesn’t always work. (The Wingspan?) but hey, it worked for The Beatles right?
Books are another situation. You certainly don’t want brand confusion, but I’ve found numerous books with the same names, so you have to look at the author. It’s not that big of a deal, but it happens much more there than in board games. One of my novels on Amazon is called The Shadow Reaper. If I do a search for that full name because I’m an unknown all these other books come up even though they don’t have that full name. And they come up before mine, even though I searched the exact name. That’s because they use some of the search terms, like Shadow Reaper or Shadow Reapers. It is better to try and have your name more different, whether a book or game if for no other reason than fewer similarly named titles will pop up in your search. Amazon favors high review counts and high sales, however, so that skews the search.
One thing I like to do is right away create a FB Group for my board games with the name in it. This shows I’m claiming it. Of course that doesn’t offer any actual protection, only word of mouth.
The PDGA has a system, so perhaps if you would like this to happen, an association could be organized to give their stamp of approval for game names. On BGG though, as long as the game has a picture associated with it, even though there may be 100 titles with a name, it doesnt take too long to find it.
Ive sold more games at Target just walking around the game isle because Ive been able to strike up a conversation with a random person about how the game makes me feel while playing it, not because of the title or even the box art.
Does the name “Expeditions” qualify for a trademark?
That name seem too generic and not distinct enough.
It qualifies, but the actual trademark we were able to secure is “1920+ Expeditions”. The name of the game is still just Expeditions, though.
I find there is a fine line between a good unique name and one that passed the three-tier test you mentioned of legality, searchability, and spellability. The first is fairly easy, just have to do some searches on government websites for trademarks. The second two are tied together since people need to be able to spell it to search for it, and when searching it needs to not blend into everything else on the net.
The first game I self-published was a card game about Brazilian Steakhouses we called “Churrascaria”. It was unique and worked for legality, and was great for searchability as there were no other games with that name or theme. But the spelling messed some people up. When we reprint we will stick with the name, but for other games we are trying to keep spelling more in mind.
Its still really hard to come up with really unique names without playing with language a bit. especially with so many games coming out each year.
Sounds like there’s a market for a service. Imagine, if you will, a tier on BGG for verified publishers to submit a game title, along with limited game development details, so they can host a listing of the title only along with a disclaimer that says the game is in development by a verified publisher. All the info would have to be guaranteed confidential. I’d also imagine there would need to be a limited timeframe within which the game would need to be published or the listing would be removed and made available to other publishers.
“To name something is the most important thing in the world” -Kong Fuzi (according to Qiu Xiaolong)
Every since my dad read A Wizard of Earthsea to me when I was eight I’ve been fasciated by names and naming. Thank you for this post on the subject. Having played in a band I know how hard it is to come up with a good name.
I like the name, “Expeditions”. It is something I can both pronounce and spell.
This problem is not unique to the gaming industry. I am amazed at some of the names conceived for new drug products. Perhaps one could use an alternate spelling such as Xpeditions ir a foreign language name (e.g. Spanish: Expedicio’n).
Hello ! This is Charles Amir from Super Meeple. Regarding our game it’s the reimplementation of an old Kramer game called Expedition that’s why we first called the game Expedition. And then we realized that KBG was releasing a game with the same name so we decided to add a “s” as it is finally more in line with the game. And you contacted me finally to tell me about the release of your game under the same name. Everything was finished on our side but we didn’t launch the production yet and as we want to keep the original title we will add the subtitle “Around the world”.
I don’t think it’s really an issue IF the games are enough different. There’s I guess a small chance to confuse the games.
We had another issue with our other gamers game coming out this year called Doggerland. Another publisher contacted us because they also wanted to put this name but finally they will change the name.
With 1500 new games per year it’s not surprising that this happens more and more 😁
All the best,
Thanks for your note, Charles! It sounds like we both did the same thing after discovering the KBG game name. :) I appreciate your flexibility, and I like the title “Around the World”.
Expeditions is admittedly a less evocative name than some of the other Stonemaier games… Scythe, Pendulum, and Euphoria might be some of my favorite names. But it looks so good on the box (love the scythe reference and the meteor), seeing the two “Expeditions” games side by side they give off such a different feel. Anyone that sees these in a physical retailer would be drawn to each for different reasons rather than seeing one as a “me too.”
Of course the confusion involved in marketing, searchability, and community discussion is the real concern here and it doesn’t seem there’s a good solution for it. In the event that both games become evergreen, I imagine the community will invent its own solution for differentiating the two regardless of the official names. If only one game or either becomes evergreen then this is only going to be an issue for a short while before the next big thing grabs people’s attention.
I find the sort of “convergent evolution” in design fascinating. In this case it was just the name but you see more drastic convergences in entertainment all the time, and many times it was not that one creator ripped off the other. My first exposure to this as a kid was Bug’s Life vs Ants. It seems a little less coincidental in board games when it’s a common theme but I wonder if there are examples of two games coming out at the same time that seem alike in so many ways until you really look further into it: Ankh vs Kemet Blood and Sand comes to mind, very different but not obvious at first to a casual onlooker.
I see the solution on the box cover.
The name of the game is
1920+ EXPEDITIONS
That is indeed the trademarked name of the game, but we’ll refer to it as Expeditions.
YES, EXACTLY!!
I must be missing the point of this thread.
However, there has been a rash of the same game name.
I am looking forward to going on some expeditions in the 1920+’s.
Why not just add “Scythe” to the title?
“Scythe Expeditions” … problem solved.
Putting Scythe anywhere in the title makes it look like a Scythe expansion, so that isn’t a possibility.
But it already looks like a Scythe expansion with font style and box art.
Even from a middle distance, it is communicating to me that it is from the Scythe universe.
Greetings from Korea Boardgames.
We met Super Meeple in Nurnberg and heard about the story and thought that we were lucky to be the first one to release the game among three.
It’s getting harder to avoid this kind of issue with so many new games and even more old games. We also decided to be more careful when we make a new game title.
I hope you can find better name than Expedition.
Thanks Albert! The name of our game is Expeditions–you can see it on the final box shown in the photo on this post. :)
This is the first i have heard of this game (I’m bouncing back and forth between two hobbies these days, so new stuff for each hobby is taking longer to register with me). I haven’t looked it up on bgg yet, and I don’t know anything about it beyond what the article says.
I am intrigued!
If Scythe had been anywhere in the title, I would have associated the challenging for me, I am assuming from what I have read, to learn rules for Scythe, with this new game. I would have associated some of that game’s weight as bgg uses the term, with this new game.
Now, it could be this new game is similar in one or both of those qualities. It could be more challenging for me in one or both, or less challenging, in one or both.
I’m going to check it out, though, for sure. The name draws me in, whereas Scythe has a bunch of associations from having looked into it. I will eventually learn and try it using Dized, because with my variable fibromyalgia brain fog, such a thing is a huge boon and makes such things so much better for me, though I have not yet used it for anything at the level of Scythe, yet.
Anyway, from my research, Scythe feels somewhat intimidating, though perhaps it may go better than I think! Not having Scythe in the title here helps me assess Expeditions more as its own thing.
At least when deciding to give it any more time and effort to look into, based on first impressions from just this article alone.
Off to go check it out some more.
I appreciate this analysis and perspective, Sara! I still have a lot to reveal, but the rulebook is available, along with some videos on the design diary page.
Sara, I’m happy to hear that you have found Dized tutorials useful! If you end up using it for Scythe we would love to hear how it went, and if there’s anything you think would’ve made the experience even better.
The Dized Tutorial for Scythe can be found here: https://app.dized.com/game/scythe
Both pulled it out of the ethos at the same time. It is what it is.
I’m sorry for the frustrations you had in naming. For what it’s worth, I, and I’m sure many others, highly prefer a title that’s simple and clean like Expeditions versus something line “The Expedition to vanquish evil and discover the meteorite’s powers.”
You can put Jamey Stegmaier’s before any game title you designed just like civilization series.
There is a compromise solution. A long name consisting of the keyword written in huge letters on the box followed by something more like a description than part of the title in very small letters. Example: Expeditions a story of survival and exploration. The second part will not be seen as the title of the game but as a description and when people will talk about the game they will only use the keyword for the most popular game with the same name.
Yeah now you totally gotta rename it: “Scythedition – Traveling mechs of Hexadimension the Stonemaiergame”. Sorry it’s the only way.
You solved it, Tony! :)
I suggest that you find an honest person who knows how to create web sites and has a good reputation in the game industry. Matt Holden (Indie Game Alliance) and Gabe Barrett (BGDL) come to mind.
Pay that person to create a website where a publisher can pay $10 to indicate that they’re thinking about releasing a game with a certain name at a certain date. More precisely, the site would have a page where a user (typically a publisher) would enter a credit card number, expiration date, the 3-digit CVV, a game name, an estimate release date and optionally the user’s email address. The website would record this information, charge $10 to the card, and send an email to verify the email address; it would make the game name, release date and optionally email address public. Perhaps the website also would allow the user to enter a URL whose domain name matches that of the email address.
This process would NOT reserve the game name. It would simply advise everybody in the industry that somebody considered it worthwhile to spend $10 on announcing that they hope to use a certain name. Optionally, they could put their company’s identity behind the name so that others know how seriously to take the post. Furthermore, it would not prevent others from using the same mechanism to announce that they, too, want to use the same name; should one or both provide an email address, they could negotiate subtitles.
You need an honest person because you’ll need to swear that person to secrecy as far as not using the IP address of the user to reverse-engineer identities. You’ll need someone with coding chops because they’ll need to keep the site secure. You’ll need someone in the game industry so everybody trusts the integrity of the approach.
Another option would be to get the folks at BGG to add a similar feature to their site. I think you’d be able to judge better than I can whether the people at BGG are competent and trustworthy enough to handle this, as I’ve never met them.
I think that would be a very clever solution if people would actually use and respect it, Chris!
I don‘t think there is anything you can do about reserving a name. We have an upcoming game with a certain name that we entered on BGG. We don’t have the box art yet though. A month after we published on BGG, another publisher used the same name for a game they had been teasing as ‚top secret‘, showing all the art apart from the box and the title. They applied to trademark the name after we had published it on BGG.
We obviously won’t use it now. Our lesson is not to show the name unless we can show art as well. Then we are automatically closer to publishing the game anyway. It is what it is ☺️
Initial reaction to hearing the name is that there are far too many games with “expeditions” in the title. I am a huge fan of Scythe, so I preordered the game regardless, but it did put a slight damper on my excitement to have such a commonplace name.
Have you thought of calling the game Scythe Expeditions?
We did! But that would confuse people into thinking it’s an expansion for Scythe.
I think the fictional names can be good, because they are unique to the world of your game. I also think that a very specific real word name can work well. “Expeditions” is a fairly generic description of an activity that happens in a lot of games. Something like Taiga, Siberia, or Tunguska would stand out more as a unique name.
I think those are great names…if Expeditions were tied to only one region. But there’s a very good chance we’ll explore a completely different region in an expansion.
How about…
EXPEDITIONS Tunguska
EXPEDITIONS Yucatan
EXPEDITIONS The Factory
Each game is set in the 1920+ alternative universe that inspired SCYTHE
We did consider that for a while, but it looked odd on the box for some reason.
1920+
EXPEDITIONS
Tunguska
[ Tentacle Corruption ]
[ Anna Bear ]
A Sequel to SCYTHE
Game design by…
World building by…
SM Games logo
—-
Perhaps „looking odd on the box“ is the least bad option, considering the various issues you are having with the „generic“ name Expeditions.
I guess you could try bolting two cool words together, though I suspect that Games Workshop has already copyrighted everything and anything anyone could ever imagine…
I get the appeal of a single-word name, but as an end user, it is very frustrating to search for information about that product, including forum posts for rules clarifications. BGG search is basic, which makes it difficult to search, especially when every word in your search is common. Being able to leverage Google to search for posts is so much better.
As a software developer, this applies to finding help with development tools, as well. There is a very popular framework called Angular. With version 2+, they drastically changed how everything works so that is a completely different framework, so they started emphasizing that everything before version 2 is “AngularJS” (JS being short for JavaScript, the language it uses), and with version 2+, it’s simply Angular. The problem is that before version 2, everybody just called it Angular, so when you’re searching for help, you get a lot of results for the old, different framework. My point here is that making the name simpler made it much more difficult to research.
Searching for “Akarios how to…” or “Gloomhaven how to…”, I’ll get good results. Searching for “Expeditions how to…”, I’m going to have to wade through irrelevant stuff to find what I’m looking for. Right now, if I search for “Expeditions how to…”, I get results for No Man’s Sky. Maybe that will change some once people start playing your game, but probably not much. I’m going to have to type “expeditions board game how to…” every time, which adds an additional complication because with smartphones and autocorrect, more words makes more frustration.
Without considering search engines, Expeditions is a solid name, and I like it. Now, we live in a world where “google” is a ubiquitous verb and should probably always be considered. I don’t think it will affect the success of the game but will simply add some minor frustrations.
(I hope that made some sense and wasn’t too much rambling.)
The complements the concern I raised as an online retailer. Online searches are such a ubiquitous part of the modern life, so it is worthwhile for publishers to take this into consideration when coming up with a title for a new game.
I absolutely agree! :)
Expeditions is currently my 5th search engine result on google. People might forget the s and type Expedition and all they will see is Ford Expedition (which is what I did). I would have preferred Expeditions Scythe or something with Scythe since that’s what people will remember, and I thought it was in the world of Scythe.
As a consumer, i dislike use of common one word names. It makes searches for the game a headache. I can imagine expeditions falling in that group as it will pull back countless random search results from board games and non boardgames uses of that word. Some words are worse than others though
You gotta do the Sanderson/every popular series method. Take two words and smash them together.
Stormlight
Warbreakers
Mistborn
Etc
Mythwind
Stonesaga
Etc… haha.
Ha ha…I was thinking of Stonesaga while writing this! You do a great job combining evocative, easy-to-spell words.
As soon as you start to look for “two easy words smashed together” in media, you will see it everywhere. It’s uncanny
What’s funny is they actually did that very thing with “Stonemaier”!
That’s true! It’s a combination of my co-founder’s last name (Stone) and mine (Stegmaier).
“Expeditions: A Scythe Sequel” seems like a good way to distinguish the game from other games using forms of Expedition while also pulling in the name recognition of Scythe and clearly stating that it’s a sequel.
Everything in the world is getting so saturated that it’s getting harder and harder to come up with something unique without alienating a lot of people. A weird/unique name might as well be no name if it doesn’t hook people somehow.
Thanks! That’s essentially what we did, though we made it a byline instead of a subtitle.
As an online retailer (The Game Steward), our perspective is a bit different – one word titles with a common word are…less than ideal for online advertising (as well as SEO purposes). Our advice (FWIW) – please select a name that is unique, as well as being easy to remember and spell. It raises the cost of advertising when the majority of clicks are false positives by people actually looking for something other than the board game.
Keep in mind, that this is specifically limited to our perspective as an online retailer (we are limited to the niche of crowdfunded games, but the same advice applies to all publishers). We recognize that publishers have all sorts of reasons to select a title for a game that have nothing to do with online searches. But it would be nice if publishers kept this more in mind as part of the process.
A great example of a title that worked really well was Gloom of Kilforth. It’s an easy name to remember, spell, and pronounce – and it actually sounds like a real place! But it’s unique, and anyone searching for “Kilforth” is almost certainly looking for that game. Frosthaven is another that works really well.
On the flip side, “Earth” and “Moon” are a couple recent examples that are so generic that it becomes problematic. Board games about sports can present similar issues if the title is too generic. I can certainly understand why publishers select names like these, but I hope publishers understand why one word titles with common words/names like these present their own problems beyond the risk of being used by other publishers.
That’s great feedback! Though I’ve heard people confuse Gloom of Kilforth with the game Gloom for the reason you mention in your last paragraph. :)
That makes sense. There is always another consideration to keep in mind!
FWIW, now that it is a line of games (Gloom of, Shadows of, Call of…), people looking for these games are more likely to simply search for “Kilforth”. The issue you mention reinforces the point why a unique name can help so much for advertising, searches, and SEO.
Scythe is such a strong brand name; I imagine you considered calling it something like Scythe Expeditions since it takes place in the same worldbuilding space. Did you choose not to go that route because you were concerned people would think it was another expansion? Or because the gameplay had nothing to do with Scythe? Or other reasons?
If Stonemaier didn’t have such a stellar track record (such that buyers take notice of a game just because your company chose to publish it), would that decision potentially have been different?
I agree, and we definitely considered putting Scythe in the name like that. But I thought that would confuse people into thinking Expeditions is an expansion to Scythe, while it’s actually a completely separate, standalone game. It’s a 1920+ game, not a Scythe game/expansion.
I think there’s always going to be a risk of this when the game title is a single word in common usage. ‘Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig’ isn’t likely to run into the same problem (leaving aside it being a mash-up of two existing titles), nor ‘Charterstone’. So unusual words and/or longer titles would seem a solid strategy for avoiding tripping over games.
A question in return. Single word titles tend to the norm in SM games. Is this just a personal preference or is there data that they market and/or sell better? (Apologies if you’ve covered this already in a previous post).
Excellent points, Ben! As for single-word names, I think it’s partially personal preference–I like a good, strong, one-word name–but subjectively I think a one-word name anchors the name in peoples’ minds a little better than multi-word names.
I named my first game ‘Scuba’. Terrible for SEO, but good for linking a title to a game. Also nice of you to notify Super Meeple, they’re nice people too.
It’s a good, strong one-word name!
Choosing just one word for the name will always run the risk of this kind of thing happening. ‘Expedition to Tunguska’ would have avoided this for example but might not be what you want creatively or from a marketing point of view.
That’s a good example. In this case, we didn’t want the game only associated with Tunguska, as there may be an expansion someday that sends players to a different region. But I get what you’re saying about multi-word names.
Expeditions to…your perfect world: Scythe
It seems this happens more often with common words (which makes sense). Using a (made up) name from your IP might avoid this, but I think it’s just a risk you take.
Like you said, “reserving” a name on BGG could help but that could spill the beans on the reveal potentially (unless you intentionally leave the publisher info blank).
It’s definitely difficult to create unique product names these days. Increasingly so in the board game space. Thanks for the article and good luck!
That’s a good point about the value of making up a word (particularly if it’s memorable and easy to spell).
Is 1920+ part of the name? That will help set it apart from other games with the same or similar names.
It’s part of the trademarked name, but the name is Expeditions.