Titles - a new theory

Decided that The Lucky Joneses needs a new title. It's simply not descriptive enough (on first exposure) for people to know what it's about, or be interested in learning more.

That lead me to think about titles I've come up with that I think work. I think what they do is give a clue about what I think the hook is, and they use a pop-cultural phrase. Examples - The Zombie Plan (is a game about surviving a zombie attack). Left Coast (is a game about slightly crazy sci-fi writers in California).

Initially, I'd been brainstorming ideas related to 'family'. I considered 'family to be the centre of The Lucky Joneses. Obviously a new title would have to key off that somehow. But that didn't come up with anything that inspired me (except 'Family Crisis'. I kinda like that).

So, I mind-mapped all the hooks I could think of for this game, the things I was excited about, and ran them through The Prioritizer. Here's what I got:

1. Comedy (88.1%)
2. Screwing each other over (83.3%)
3. Wild and crazy scenarios (71.4%)
4. Best case / Worst case (59.5%)
5. Sitcom (54.8%)

Tied for 6. Take turns being the star // Family //Simple (17.9%)

I found that interesting. Family is at the bottom of the list. 'Comedy' and 'Screwing each other over', followed by 'Wild and crazy scenarios' are at the heart of what I'm really into with this game.

Perhaps a subtitle: "A game about families" is in order.

[Boost] The new script

Yep, there's a new script a-simmering. I'm working on it with Sean, and 'Boost' be its working title.

More later, but here's a couple of reference articles for it:

The Promise of noopolitick

As the information age deepens, a globe–circling realm of the mind is being created — the “noosphere” that Pierre Teilhard de Chardin identified 80 years ago.

And David Brin's summary of the above paper, which describes the 'adversary' to the developing noosphere.