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The Half-Life of video-game names
February 7, 2007
Sometimes the marketing moves of the video games industry beggar understanding.
An announcement by Electronic Arts this morning left me scratching my head as hard as when Nintendo decided last year to call its new console the Wii instead of sticking to its original choice, the Revolution.
That one grew on me a bit but I have yet to work out the logic of calling EA’s latest action game titles, The Orange Box and The Black Box.
Orange boxes I associate with something you stand on to get a better view or to store stuff under the sink in. Black boxes are aircraft flight recorders (although they happen to be bright orange).
Action game titles should be called something like Medal of Duty or Metroid Halo Gears of Destruction.
But EA “today announced the naming and product configurations The Black Box and The Orange Box, two of the most anticipated action game offerings shipping worldwide in Fall 2007.”
The Black Box, just for PC gamers, contains Half-Life 2: Episode Two, a new action game Portal and Team Fortress 2. The Orange Box, for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 includes The Black Box’s content, plus the original Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One.
I suppose it will soon become a cool code among gamers – Are you getting the Black or the Orange? – but as names go, only The White Box could top these for minimalism.
