What’s in a name? Sorry Romeo, but I’m going to have to
disagree with you here. My wife and I went on a small outing this weekend to a
nearby canyon and stumbled upon a trailhead marker titled “Desolation Trail.” The
name certainly caught our attention. I doubt we would have picked that trail
from a list of less intimidating names, but since we had some time we took a
few minutes to explore the desolation ourselves.
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| Photo taken by Ryan Malavolta for UtahOutside.com |
We met another couple descending from the trail. They explained how they’d avoided the trail for years because of negative things they’d heard about the trail: it was arduous, it was treacherous, it was ugly. About what you’d expect from a trail titled “desolation.” But, after finally checking it out for themselves, they discovered that it wasn’t any of those things. Intrigued, my wife and I followed the trail up. All we saw was sunshine and trees, and we discussed revisiting the trail on a future outing.
As developers, we might overlook how much naming we do. We
often do a lot of “proper noun” naming of places and people, but on top of that
we frequently need to name enemies, abilities, and game mechanics. It might be easy
to simply use the first names that come to mind. (What’s in a name? A fireball
by any other name would roast thy feet.) However, if the connotations and
implications of a name contradict its purpose, your players might be confused
or—like the hiking couple in the story above—avoid the “desolation” all
together. As we decide on final names for all of our character abilities in
Alkanaur, I’ll definitely have that trailhead marker on my mind.
Oh, and I’ll probably name an ability “desolation.” As long
as the name fits.
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