Space Moguls
I have finally arrived at a name for the Commodore 64 game I’m working on and after announcing it on Twitter I think there are a few more things to say about the name.
The game started with a working title of T.U.D.E., an abbreviation for Terraforming Utility Droid Expedition. Pretty early on I dropped the T since there isn’t any actual terraforming in the game. This was always a temporary name, which wasn’t an issue while I wasn’t talking about the game.
So now that I have been talking about the game for a while it is increasingly more awkward to call it “the c64 game I’m working on”, and I’d either settle for U.D.E. or decide on something else.
The ideas that came to mind were mostly synonyms of Settlers, like colonists or pioneers, none of which really fit that well. I also asked for and received suggestions ranging from M.U.D.E. where M wasn’t entirely clear or P.L.O.N.C. as an illustration that long abbreviations are not great game names.
I did come up with a few good names in Swedish but the translations for each of them wasn’t working in English, or translated to existing game names.
M.U.L.E., which this game is inspired by, is a great name, even if it is awkward to say “Multi Use Labour Element” out loud. The abbreviation makes it easy to imagine a donkey like entity that you put to work to produce things. As much as I tried I couldn’t come up with something similar.
When I read an interview with Danielle Berry (formerly Dan Bunten) there was a question about how the name M.U.L.E. came about. M.U.L.E. was partially inspired by the book “Time Enough For Love” by Robert A. Heinlein, where bio-engineered mules were used to settle on planets. The answer also suggests that before releasing the game EA wanted to change the name to Moguls from Mars. The interview appears in “Halcyon Days: Interviews with Classic Computer and Video Game Programmers” which is available to read online here.
In Space Moguls the players set out from Earth but going into space to try their luck on various planets, so Space Moguls just feels right. I don’t know if whoever wanted to change the name would feel happy or disappointed that I’m appropriating something similar, but it works and I’m taking it.
So with the naming out of the way I can resume finishing up the game, the game ending is now happening at the end of the last turn so I just need to fill in the bits in the middle that are still in progress :)