Could you make a living being the guy who comes up with video game characters' names?
Asked by
mangeons (
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August 2nd, 2009
My stepdad is playing “Oblivion” on Xbox 360, and I noticed how there are hundreds of characters, and no two have the same name. I was wondering ”Who the heck gets paid to make up all those names? That would be an awesome job.” So I was wondering, is it possible to make a living off of doing that, or would it have to be a side-job type of thing?
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12 Answers
It’s a part of the video game creation pipeline, yes, but no there is not one guy who sits thinking up names all day. There was likely a guy who sat and wrote a program that would generate random names, then he moved on to a different part of working on the game.
No, you don’t get paid for that. Usually it’s either someone in the production team (but they get paid for doing lots of other stuff, not just that), or simply fans on a website. Coming up with the names is quite an easy task compared to everything else in the game.
I came up with many of the names (especially the town names) for “Heroes of Might and Magic IV”. That included the final town in the campaign. I knew the producer and just gave him ideas.
No way. I couldn’t even come up with a Fluther name different than my first initial and last name.
@dverhey I didn’t mean specifically you. I meant “Is it possible to make a living”. I guess I should have made that more clear. I guess it’s a double-use question! Sorry.
No. I am sure the names are a diversion and perk of the programmers.
“I’m naming this character after that kid who used to kick my ass after school…”
I would love to do character design.
No, sorry, for instance, I’d bet money that WoW had some sort of tolkienish language generator, where they set parameters such as meme combinations (ven la -tica ) that they combo at random to suggest names.
I’d be down for it. why not.
I want a career naming all kinds of things! I have names for books, restaurants and other businesses, inventions, etc. just rattling around in my head. Won’t someone please pay me for them so I can empty it out?
Naming is half the fun, not the WHOLE fun :D
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