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Shock Force .... a shocking name for a product ? :)


scottie

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I'm kind of glad Stryker didn't get into the title as the game has long since diverged from the US Army side of things.

Shock Force is ok, sounds kind of hammy but as others have pointed out, this sort of crap was all the rage in the Rumsfeld Pentagon. Remember Team America:World Police; "America - "Fvck Yeah!"" that is a parody of the real world nonsense going on at the time.

Actually that might have been good: CM:FY! :D

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I guess Combat mission Death to Bashir Al Assad and his Revolutionary Guard Thugs and Evil Henchmen,also known as" CMDTBAAAHRGTAEH" wouldn't work? Probably not politically correct in the new "sensative to our enemies" type of wars we have these days.:D Also,you would need a bigger package for that title and that would run over budget.;)

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The original name we came up with was CM: Stryker Brigade, to emphasize we were building the game around the SBCT (which was, at the time, not even operational yet). We tried to trademark the name along with a couple other names. We got a very nice letter, and followup call, from the Pentagon's lawyers informing us that we couldn't do that. And I'm serious, it was actually a very nice lawyer! Don't ask me how that is possible, but it's true! And you lawyers reading this can bite me... 1st Amendment :) Heh.

Coming up with a name for a game that fits several critical criteria at the same time is really, really difficult. Especially for a historical game set in WW2, and even more especially for ones built around specific battles. Even if the name is technically free of legal strings, we might not want to use it because it either doesn't sound all that good or is too well known in some other form (board game, early computer game, etc).

Steve

That's pretty interesting Steve.

Once you had a legal shortlist did you employ some sort of voting system internally ? was it market research ? or did it just come down to that's legal it will have to do :)

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Shock and Awe sounded a little bit silly,but that didn't stop everyone from the Whitehouse,The Joint chiefs,The pentagon,all the way down to some private pulling guard duty at an airfield in the middle of no where using it repeatedly during the opening stages of the Iraq invasion.It's a new kinda military,one raised on video games.So,it only makes sense that alot of the terminology sounds gamey.;)

It came from an academic paper:

http://www.dodccrp.org/files/Ullman_Shock.pdf

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No market research... we know our market better any anybody :) Focus groups and what not aren't really useful and take a lot of time. So we run names by our testers and ask for suggestions. It's got to be short, catchy, indicative of what the game is, etc. We then go with what our gut, and legal abilities, tell us will work best. It's really difficult to do.

After the name is out there, all is fine as long as the name is reasonably effective. The name Shock Force has done very well for us. Better than we probably thought it would when we first decided to go with it.

Steve

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Focus groups and what not aren't really useful...

I'd agree with that. Most ad campaigns I've seen that have been market researched are unspeakably dumb. Apparently ad agencies in the US assume their fellow citizens all have an IQ of about 12. I suppose that could be true of them and their colleagues...

Michael

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Well how dumber the add, the more effective it is.

Remember that brand of washing powder on your washing machine? I bet it has a horrible ad that made your subconsciousness go wild in the shop. You think you selected the brand randomly, but thats certainly not the case.

The only way to be really (ad) free in that regard is to stop watching TV, reading magazines/newspapers, the internet and wear a blinded sunglasses when outside.

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After a conversion about alternate names for games I can't help but think of CMSF as meaning "Commission Fock Sauce" so for me it doesn't matter as much :D

But yeah, a lot of it (UI, box art, music (not as much), name etc) seem a bit out of place. Looking at the box you'd think it was an indie first person shooter.

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