Community Help choose the The New World's new title

[Infinitron]

Tags: Iron Tower Studio; The New World; Vince D. Weller

The New World was known as the Colony Ship RPG before it received its current title last June. Apparently, Iron Tower were unaware when they chose the name that Amazon Game Studios were developing a similarly titled MMO called simply New World, first announced back in September 2016. It was hoped that Amazon's game might end up being cancelled, as often occurs with such projects, but its appearance at Gamescom this year laid such hopes to rest. Since going up against Jeff Bezos' legal team is a bad idea, the Colony Ship RPG must be renamed yet again. This isn't necessarily bad news, since many people were unhappy with The New World as a title. Now they have a chance to pick a title they like:

We picked the name (The New World) a few months before the first reports about Amazon's MMO hit the net, meaning we didn't know about Amazon's New World back then. Yes, we should have double-checked again before launching the site, but we didn't. Back then it wasn't clear if the MMO is still in development as there were rumors of cancellations, so we decided to wait and see what transpires. Well, as of last week it's clear that Amazon's New World is alive and kicking, which means we have to change the name.

I really liked The New World as it fits the game perfectly and while Amazon hasn't contacted us about the name, their pre- and post-release media campaign would drown us. Fortunately, we haven't done any real marketing yet, so changing the name is relatively easy at this point. All we need is a fitting name, which is where you come in.

We went through a hundred or so names, ranging from absolutely awful to really bad, and settled on these 3 names representing our last, best hope:

1. Starfarer - it's the name of the ship in the game, so there's some relevance. The obvious downside is that it's fairly generic. It works as the ship's name considering the nature of the ship but I'm not sure it makes a good name for anything else. I'd prefer Starfarers describing the people, but it's trademarked up to its eyeballs so...

2. The Journey/Voyage to Proxima Centauri or something similar - the only advantage is that the plot summary is in the title. You don't have to wonder what the game's about.

3. The Pilgrims of Earth - similar meaning as the New World (i.e. the pilgrims of Mayflower), focus on the people not the ship or the journey, nice 50s sci-fi feel, built-in sequel (The Conquerors of Proxima Centauri).

I prefer #3 but I was wrong plenty of times before, so I'd like to know what you think first, before we change the logo, the site, and Steam's page.
​

Which shall it be? Starfarer, Proxima Centauri, Pilgrims, or perhaps something else entirely? As usual, you can vote over there or right here in our Iron Tower subforum, or both if you really want to make a statement.

UPDATE: After receiving a large number of responses, Vault Dweller has decided to launch a second round of voting with some new options. Once again, you can vote over there or right here.

 

[I'm Big Into Anal]

Exodus

edit: woops already exists

 

[I'm Big Into Anal]

The Final Solution

 

[Johannes]

Star Trek

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Fuck Amazon.

Also: the first option is just plain bad. It sounds sholewarely.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Fuck Amazon.

That's not a good title.

 

[TripJack]

tasteful space rape

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Startruckers Inc.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Vince Dweller's Proxima Centauri

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Age of Incandescence

 

[nobre]

No Truce With The Furies

 

[Western]

Through the Void

Dwellers of a Dark City

The Last City

Vince Weller's Ark

The Lost Ark

A/The Haunted Starfarer

The last/first Starfarer

 

[Roqua]

I think a play on or just taking the name of some famous traveling books would be neat, like-

The Narrow Road to the Deep Space and Other Travel Sketches
To a Distant Land
The Black Highway

The Histories
I See By My Spacesuit​

Dark Star Safari
A View of the Galaxy
The Fearful Void
The Stories In Between
From an Earthen City
Great Plains
The Road to Somewhere
The Histories
I See By My Spacesuit
The Long Walk

Etc. Some crap I just made up -

The Next Frontier

Star Pilgrims

The Star Colonials

The Longest Voyage

 

[Western]

No Truce With The Furies

Colonial Mariners.

 

[Terra]

Star Control: No Truce with Paul & Fred.

All 3 sound inferior to The New World tbh.

 

[Johannes]

All 3 sound inferior to The New World tbh.

The New World was shit, because the game takes place on a spaceship... Not a new world

Age of Decadence had the same thing, the world was not very decadent

 

[HoboForEternity]

Lost Children of Terra/Earth
Beneath The Steel Coffin
Lambs of The Stars
Path to Eden
The Promised Land / Journey to The Promised Land
etc

 

[Kev Inkline]

Children of the Stars

There's one Chinese documentary with that name, but it's a translation so I don't think it would be a trademark infringement.

Children of the Stars is a 2007 documentary about children with autism (Chinese: 孤独症; pinyin: Gūdúzhèng) in the People's Republic of China. It was produced by Alexander Haase and directed by Rob Aspey. The title is an English translation of the expression "星星的孩子" (pinyin: Xīngxīng -de háizi; literally: "star children; children of the stars"), a phrase used in Taiwan to describe autistic children.[1]

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Of those three titles, I like #3 the most.

If I had to choose my own?
It depends on the overall goal of the game, and what happens and what the story will be, etc.
One game that does it well as an example? Underrail. Simple, straight to the point, easy to remember, etc.
More than that, everything is about the Under Rail itself, who built it, etc.

For example, Lost Exodus might be a good title, or something similar.
Leviathan's Journey is another decent one. Maybe something that references some sort of descent into hell, if nihilism of some sort is key to the feel of the game.
However, if key themes will be hope and man's indomitable spirit, than that should definitely be a reference to that in the title based on the journey itself.
Something like Forgotten Legacy maybe.

 

[Glaucon]

Grognards, Gold and Glory

 

[Agame]

Ship of Fools

And #3 is probly best from the list, but its still kind of lame.

 

[polo]

All 3 sound awful to me tbh.

 

[Life of the Party]

The best title would probably be a line of dialogue or something like that. However, if you can't think of a title for a game, a book, a movie, just turn to poetry.

For example:

There were faces to remember in the Valley of the Shadow,
There were faces unregarded, there were faces to forget;
There were fires of grief and fear that are a few forgotten ashes,
There were sparks of recognition that are not forgotten yet.
For at first, with an amazed and overwhelming indignation
At a measureless malfeasance that obscurely willed it thus,
They were lost and unacquainted—till they found themselves in others,
Who had groped as they were groping where dim ways were perilous.

There were lives that were as dark as are the fears and intuitions
Of a child who knows himself and is alone with what he knows;
There were pensioners of dreams and there were debtors of illusions,
All to fail before the triumph of a weed that only grows.
There were thirsting heirs of golden sieves that held not wine or water,
And had no names in traffic or more value there than toys:
There were blighted sons of wonder in the Valley of the Shadow,
Where they suffered and still wondered why their wonder made no noise.

There were slaves who dragged the shackles of a precedent unbroken,
Demonstrating the fulfillment of unalterable schemes,
Which had been, before the cradle, Time’s inexorable tenants
Of what were now the dusty ruins of their father’s dreams.
There were these, and there were many who had stumbled up to manhood,
Where they saw too late the road they should have taken long ago:
There were thwarted clerks and fiddlers in the Valley of the Shadow,
The commemorative wreckage of what others did not know.

And there were daughters older than the mothers who had borne them,
Being older in their wisdom, which is older than the earth;
And they were going forward only farther into darkness,
Unrelieved as were the blasting obligations of their birth;
And among them, giving always what was not for their possession,
There were maidens, very quiet, with no quiet in their eyes;
There were daughters of the silence in the Valley of the Shadow,
Each an isolated item in the family sacrifice.

There were creepers among catacombs where dull regrets were torches,
Giving light enough to show them what was there upon the shelves—
Where there was more for them to see than pleasure would remember
Of something that had been alive and once had been themselves.
There were some who stirred the ruins with a solid imprecation,
While as many fled repentance for the promise of despair:
There were drinkers of wrong waters in the Valley of the Shadow,
And all the sparkling ways were dust that once had led them there.

There were some who knew the steps of Age incredibly beside them,
And his fingers upon shoulders that had never felt the wheel;
And their last of empty trophies was a gilded cup of nothing,
Which a contemplating vagabond would not have come to steal.
Long and often had they figured for a larger valuation,
But the size of their addition was the balance of a doubt:
There were gentlemen of leisure in the Valley of the Shadow,
Not allured by retrospection, disenchanted, and played out.

And among the dark endurances of unavowed reprisals
There were silent eyes of envy that saw little but saw well;
And over beauty’s aftermath of hazardous ambitions
There were tears for what had vanished as they vanished where they fell.
Not assured of what was theirs, and always hungry for the nameless,
There were some whose only passion was for Time who made them cold:
There were numerous fair women in the Valley of the Shadow,
Dreaming rather less of heaven than of hell when they were old.

Now and then, as if to scorn the common touch of common sorrow,
There were some who gave a few the distant pity of a smile;
And another cloaked a soul as with an ash of human embers,
Having covered thus a treasure that would last him for a while.
There were many by the presence of the many disaffected,
Whose exemption was included in the weight that others bore:
There were seekers after darkness in the Valley of the Shadow,
And they alone were there to find what they were looking for.

So they were, and so they are; and as they came are coming others,
And among them are the fearless and the meek and the unborn;
And a question that has held us heretofore without an answer
May abide without an answer until all have ceased to mourn.
For the children of the dark are more to name than are the wretched,
Or the broken, or the weary, or the baffled, or the shamed:
There are builders of new mansions in the Valley of the Shadow,
And among them are the dying and the blinded and the maimed.

 

[Wunderbar]

Colony Ship RPG

 

[Vault Dweller]

MRY's suggestions:

East of Earth - I think it has a credible 1960s space opera quality to it, it's obviously about space travel, it hits the Biblical angle, and players who tagged cultural literacy will grasp that it suggests that things have not gone well aboard the ship.
As I mull this, I would throw out a possible alternative name to Starfarer for the ship: Leviathan. It's a plausible Biblical name and fits the governmental theme. What about "Starship Leviathan"?
​

Thoughts?