Hello fellow designers,
I already posted some information about my game "MOBA" (and got a lot of great feedback and suggestions), but the thing that came up almost all the times was, that nobody even remotly liked the name.
The name originaly developed like this: Because I was in some aspects inspired by the famous MOBA-videogames, it had the working title “MOBA”. My gaming group and I got used to the name and I thought it could be fun to “rip off” the name MOBA (which originally stands for “multiplayer online battle arena”) and call my game MOBA as in “massive offline battle arena” and later “massive outplay battle arena” (as the combat system focuses on anticipation of enemy actions which generates possibilities to outplay/outwit the opponent).
It seems that I’m the only one who thinks this is funny, and I received “massive” criticism wherever I posted information about the game (like: 1. MOBA is a genre, not a game name / 2. the MOBA concept does not work for tabletop games / 3. it sounds bad / 4. this doesn’t work to present your game as something unique… )
These are all valid points in my opinion, except 2. as I think that it IS possible to bring the computer MOBA feel to the tabletop (of course a 1:1 emulation would not work) by taking the fun aspects of the computer MOBA that work in board games and leaving out the rest.
So now I’m thinking of renaming this game. For me it’s important that the name conveys the cartoony, not-too-serious, videogamey, heavy action feel of my game (here is a 2 minutes video that should give you a very good idea of the theme/style: https://youtu.be/hcgiBBozhew)
I had the following idea: As for now, the game doesn' have a lore. I thought of a "story" where old, decadent and bored magicians gather and organize Arena Battles where they "persuade" the heroes to fight each other and bet on their favorite champs. Every magician of a certain status has a seer goblin servant who will "broadcast" the battle in a crystal ball (and gets hit on the head by the angry magician if the broadcast is lagging ;))
This could be a nice cover art as well (Goblin holding crystal ball with some action going on in it).
Now, in my gaming group we played arround with some names and we liked SUPER FANTASY BRAWL best. I tried some cover drafts and it could make a nice logo as well:
https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2850126_md.png
The name has a hint to classic video games, gives a good idea of what the game is about and is not too serious. Now I realized, that this name is somewhat close to SUPER BOWL which could be kind of funny (I thought the same about the MOBA-rip off :O - so feel free to persuade me that it's not) as I could try to stress some parallels to my Goblin-Seer-Broadcast-Fluff here.
Do you like it? Is it any better than MOBA? Or do you have any suggestions for names? The people on BGG brought up Prima Battle'rena, Brawl n Bleed, BAM (Battle Arena massive) and GG (like in Good Game), could one of these work for my game?
Thanks a lot for your time
Chordcommander
Ha - nice, but there will be people arguing, that it is not "multiplayer" (is 2 players multiplayer?). I think if I get to change the name I'm going as far away of the MOBA-analogies as possible ;)