The Name Debacle

One of the things I have always loved is words. I love to read and coming up with words and names is something I have always enjoyed. During our first game development I knew the name would be a big part of it. Once I had the overview of the game in my head the name just came to me. And it was perfection! Or so I thought. The name – Domin8. It had a nice nod to tradition and was memorable. We made a logo for it and everything!

Then we figured we should probably do a search, because how could no one else have come up with such a great name? It took awhile, but there it was. It was a very “adult” version of dominos. While our game was very different and we could possibly use the same name, there was no way I wanted someone to come across this game while looking for ours!

We had to come up with a new name. We racked our brains, and I wrote down so many possibilities, but nothing seemed to be as good as the original. I was worried we would never come up with anything that we would be happy with. After about a month we finally stumbled across the word summate. SUM8. That could work. We did up a logo and let it sink in. We started to like it. The more we said it and the more we played it we knew that it was the right name.

While I still like the name Domin8, to me, SUM8 is the game in all aspects. It looks good, it sounds good, and it ‘sums’ up the game in one word. Two words? A word and a number? Whatever it is, it all worked out for the best.