A new name for Gaming Stack Exchange?

Question

In the past 3 months, Gaming has grown to be one of the largest sites in the Stack Exchange network. Skyrim boosted it into the big leagues in November, and now Mass Effect 3 is showing that that wasn’t a lucky, once-in-a-lifetime event but something that can be repeated.

Those events were mainly focused on our community, but we want to do more to reach outside. We’re experimenting with things like sponsoring a League of Legends tournament, and even thinking about having a presence at conferences like PAX. These attract users directly by driving people to our site, but they also get our name out there so that the next time these people search for a question and land on our site they remember us.

The main obstacle in these more marketing/advertising focused promotions has often turned out to be something annoyingly simple: we don’t have a name. As Oak observes:

Btw stuff like that really makes me wish we had a better site name and domain name! … it's a hard decision to make, definitely. But when our name / domain name start appearing in sponsorship context, it becomes critical. (source, source)

There’s no doubt about it: “Gaming Stack Exchange” is a mouthful. But worse than just being long, it’s not really a name -- it’s a description that says “We’re the Gaming section of Stack Exchange”. It’s a name targeted to people inside the network: “Oh, this is Stack Exchange for gaming? I love gaming!”. When we tell people about the site, we get one chance to communicate who we are and what we’re about, and we’re tripping on the first three words out of our mouths.

A proposed name

So we at Stack Exchange HQ thought a lot about this, and not without disagreement. Some people feel strongly that Stack Exchange is the brand, and promoting that brand will help all the sites. Others think that each site should have its own brand that speaks to its unique community. About the only thing we can agree on right now is that “XXXXX Stack Exchange” is not a brand -- it’s too long, descriptive, and forgettable.

A few of us who love gaming decided to see if we could come up with a decent name. We thought about what we wanted to convey: not just a site about gaming, since there are tons of those. We wanted to focus on what makes us different -- answers, high-quality content, game mechanics, etc.

So we brainstormed, we made lists, we contacted domain squatters, we argued, and we came up with one name that we really liked: Game Council. Why? On the surface, it’s short, it’s unique, the domain was available, and it spoke to the core of our identity: a group of gaming experts answering important questions.

"Council" suggests expert, high-quality advice. "Ask the Game Council" and "Join the Game Council" are catchy tag lines we can use to give a sense of what we do in just a few words. Becoming an expert "Councillor" conveys the knowledge-sharing and advancement that make the site work.

Wait, what? A domain?

Well, yes and no. Domains have been exceedingly problematic in the past and have big search implications. So for now we would only use gamecouncil.com to redirect to gaming.stackexchange.com, a la Ask Different. We would use gamecouncil.com in advertising and so on, but the site will still live at the same address. We’re hoping that this gives the site an identity without all the pain associated with changing domains.

What do you think?

So there it is: our best stab at a name. We’re not going to enforce it from above, because that’s silly: if it’s going to be the identity of the site, it has to be your identity. Obviously not everyone will like it, but if we don’t have a solid majority we’ll go back to the drawing board and start all over. We’ll work with the community -- do some polls, vote on names, etc -- and see if we can come up with something better.

Or, if you like the name, we’ll get started on it right away.

Answer 1

While I'm reluctantly agreeing that maybe Gaming could do with a brand on it's own, I think a major problem here is that our proposed brand is a metaphor that doesn't fit the site. A council is NOT an inclusive community, a democracy, a rep fight or anything like that. It implies there is this prexisting council of people that do something--and it still doesn't imply Q&A...sounds more like a review site honestly.

I think if the name isn't going to fit pretty close to perfect, a more abstract, but vaguely gaming related name would fit better. It's better for a name to vaguely invoke the topic matter and have people ask "Hm, it's a site for gaming, but in what way?" than for the name to evoke an incorrect assumption. We're not a council, we're a community, a democracy, a nation, a round table anything but a council/senate/closed group.

Councils are closed, Gaming.SE is not.

Answer 2

I think "Game Council" is pretty terrible, honestly. I do have some reasons:

• The most immediate association that pops to my mind is the Jedi Council. I don't know of anything that has in common with this site, at least not without quite a stretch.

• Other councils and councillors are stuffy and boring, and that association makes me think of gaming by committee and proscriptions about n00bness or something. What would a "Game Council" actually do, anyways? I imagine either something like the ESRB or game recommendations (shudder).

• It sounds exclusive. "Oh, you haven't joined the Game Council and been admitted to the inner sanctum? Loser." I get that you want to convey knowledge and expertise, but I think this is way too far. We're talking about games.

  As anyone familiar with Meta knows I take the site policies and so on quite seriously, but the subject of the site is a recreational activity. We're not a forum and we don't do GTKY questions (etc.) but you're not going to get that across in a two-word name. Err on the side of something interesting!

• Spelling may be an issue, given the current state of English on the Internet. As well, "Counsel" sounds the same and makes sense as a name, and as Yi Jiang notes it could reasonably be mistaken as "Console" by a listener if you're not much of an orator :P

Personally I don't feel that there is any aspect of this name that's superior to the current name apart from its length. If I were to remember it, it would be as "lol what a lame name". Yes, that's a bit juvenile, but I'm just being honest. And I'm not even a teenager :P

(I'm not going to propose alternative names here as I'm interested in seeing how the votes fall on these points.)

Answer 3

We’re not going to enforce it from above, because that’s silly: if it’s going to be the identity of the site, it has to be your identity

It sucks to say so, but if that's the team's attitude we're not going to go anywhere. Direct democracy has its limits and inertia is one of them.

Take the whole drama about the envelope. Was it the right move to archive the pointless indicator with the SuperCollider? Heck yes! Did it receive unanimous support? Heck no! If you were to read meta you'd think you'd have to be Jeff Atwood to like that abomination of a thing.

The team however stood firm and worked with the community on improving the feature, never backing off to the idea that the envelope perhaps should come back. And they were ultimately right.

Some things you can't crowdsource. Design is one of them, to quote one of Jeff's favourite examples. History shows branding also is.

At the end of the day:

• We need an identity real fast before we get a lot of media attention on the LoL tourney and perhaps PAX
• It doesn't matter if our name is anything short of perfect, given that we've managed to get a ton of traffic pretty much without a name at all.
• We've already spent far too many resources (mostly time) on the topic, to the point where it would've probably been cheaper to simply hire a branding company to come up with something in our place and accept it simply because of the pricetag.
• Game Council is a pretty good name that might need some time to grow onto us until we like it; even if we don't end up liking the name, we can simply take the redirect down and change it again. Personally I like it, but it wouldn't be the first time I like something most don't.

Take "Joystiq". It's a kludge. It's impossible to spell right the first few times. Who uses joysticks anymore anyway? It sounds like the maker of a handheld controller company, not a news site.

Does it matter? No! People don't read Joystiq because of the name, they do because of the content. You can have the best name in the world, the best domain ever and still fail terribly because of the content. We have the content! We just need a name.

Coming up with silly domain names is idle fun but it won't get us anywhere, nor will consensus. Don't leave this to consensus and just be bold about it. Please.

Answer 4

Of course I agree with my own quotes that choosing a name is critical at this point. I also agree with most posts here and I'm not too fond of the proposed name. But I also agree with badp that this is something which doesn't have to be crowd-sourced. Am I fond of the proposed name? Not too much. Do I think it will actually make anything worse? Absolutely not. Will having a name make things better for our marketability? I believe so.

I do have another suggestion for an alternative naming approach, though. David laments that so many gaming tropes are already taken. The ones that aren't are often controversial, as the voting in the old name-suggestion question indicates.

Instead, I propose choosing a nonsensical word as our site name and domain name. Something not from any language's dictionary, but possibly giving some connotation of the gaming concept. Going with something like that might be less controversial and a good name can be very memorable, Googlable, and won't compete with anything else online. This approach also works for many other brands (including Internet-centric brands such as Google). It does have drawbacks, of course, such as being less consistent with naming of the other Stack Exchange network sites, but I do believe it can work in the long run, especially if we go with something which is vaguely "game-ish".

I don't want to suggest anything specific here because I don't want to turn this into a name suggestion - that's not the right thread for that; I just want to raise this suggestion to see what others think of it. Just to be clear - I would have liked a meaningful, gaming-related name - I suggest this approach as an alternative because we apparently have difficulty deciding on anything meaningful.

Answer 5

I think Game Council is okay, not great, but I agree with badp in that this is just going to turn into an opportunity to bikeshed names if left to the community. If you guys like Game Council, let's use it.

I do, however, strongly object to the position line that comes with the name:

Game Council is not just a name, it’s an identity that speaks to what makes this site great: YOU. You, the users (dare I include myself?), are the Game Council. When you join, you’re just a neophyte, a noob, a lowly acolyte of the Council. As you prove yourself, you rise in the ranks. If you’re good enough, you become a Councillor, with all the rights, swag, and privileges thereof. Your friends will sense that something is different about you. “Join the Game Council”, you’ll tell them. “Prove your knowledge. Help the noobs.”

That's not our identity, and it's not an identity I want to support or be a part of. I'm not here to condescend to people who don't know as much as me or use it as a means to get phat loot. I'm here to get answers to my questions and share some info I might have to others. It's a collaborative experience, not a parasitic one.

Position statement was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek and has been removed, so objection is removed. Yay, peace and love!

Answer 6

Well, yes and no. Domains have been exceedingly problematic in the past and have big search implications. So for now we would only use gamecouncil.com to redirect to gaming.stackexchange.com, a la Ask Different. We would use gamecouncil.com in advertising and so on, but the site will still live at the same address. We’re hoping that this gives the site an identity without all the pain associated with changing domains.

This is really essential and should be at the top of the post.

Naming is beyond difficult, it's basically impossible. But this solution gives us the best of both worlds, in my opinion.

1. It offers a more memorable, shorter name for people to use as a shortcut when talking about the site or mentioning it online.

2. We want people to see "stackexchange" in their Google (or insert other theoretically important search engine name here) search results pages and associate Stack Exchange with getting high quality answers to all their questions, not just those about gaming.

Point #2 is basically the entire purpose of Stack Exchange, so having a solution that preserves that is critical. Otherwise we'd be harming the network in the medium to long term. Network sites should live in harmony with the network, and help support the mission of the greater network as well as their own mission.

The proposed solution (whether it ultimately ends up being "gamecouncil.com" or something else is not so important) does that, and achieves #1, so I support it.

Answer 7

I know this isn't the popular opinion but I absolutely loathe Game Council. To me it carries a connotation of committee, governance and bureaucracy. At best it rubs as a shout out to the Jedi Council (which was a bureaucratic committee for governance).

I'd rather see something like Gaming Savant or (sorry Strix) Game Authority or something that conveys action and confidence than something that conveys debate. The definition below in 1 is clearly the only one that fits with the intent, yet, the other meanings are so clearly in common use to be reasonable interpretations.

coun·cil   [koun-suhl] noun

1.an assembly of persons summoned or convened for consultation, deliberation, or advice.

2.a body of persons specially designated or selected to act in an advisory, administrative, or legislative capacity: the governor's council on housing.

3.(in certain British colonies or dependencies) an executive or legislative body assisting the governor.

4.an ecclesiastical assembly for deciding matters of doctrine or discipline.

5.New Testament . the Sanhedrin or other authoritative body.

If the motivation is to rush something through before the press takes notice then perhaps the discussion should have occurred before the sponsorships went out.

Anyways, just my $0.02

Answer 8

I think having a name is better than not having a name, even if that name isn't the absolute best thing you've ever heard.

All this can do is strengthen our identity and make us more memorable. I'm not going crazy over this particular name, but it's not a bad name either. Most importantly, I like the idea of having a name.

So I support this name. Do it.

Answer 9

Keep gaming.stackexchange.com !

Stack Exchange is a brand. Not a sexy nor a consistent one. ;-) But a brand, nonetheless. It's something people have an existing familiarity with, and it would be wise to leverage this to lower the barrier to entry.

People who have participated in other communities on the SE Network can instantly infer what the essence what gaming.stackexchange.com is:

"Hey! There's a sub-site for gaming on Stack Exchange. Cool! I didn't know that, but I have an idea of what I can expect to find there."

In my opinion _{(oops, opinions are sinful on SE)}, it's already confusing for newbies who will type arqade.stackexchange.com, only to hit a "site not found" page. "Oh, was "Arqade" taken down?"

(Yes, I admit I have done this. I have also reached the "not found" page by typing askdifferent.stackexchange.com - Ask Different is actually apple.stackexchange.com)

Has anyone mistakenly typed stackoverflow.stackexchange.com? How about stackexchange.stackoverflow.com? Many years ago, during my earliest experiences with this network of sites, I could not remember if it was the Stack Overflow Network or the Stack Exchange Network, and I experienced the Mandella Effect a few times before I finally got it sorted in my mind.

If a network is going to have at least two names for many of its communities (URL name and branded name), a redirect for people who confuse the two is the least we could ask for, lol. Trivial, yet still not implemented. Or maybe SE is afraid that if it provides redirects, users will rely on them every time as a crutch? I can only speculate. This URL branding nonsense in itself could, and probably should be, (and perhaps already has been?) a separate question for meta.stackexchange.com

A short URL that redirects to gaming.stackexchange.com could be helpful, as long as it is made clear that a redirect link is what it is.

Hypothetical promotional banner:

Gaming Stack Exchange

gaming.stackexchange.com

(Maybe include the Arqade logo as a subtle background image to reinforce the brand, without adding too much confusion around which is the actual name.)

_shorturl...

The worst thing to do would be to move toward a schema like Super User, which has a separate top-level domain entirely, and my browser doesn't remember my SE login credentials because it is a separate TLD. Consequently, it is a deterrent for logging in. Please don't do this anymore with SE sites. I think that lesson has been learned though?

"Game Council" is... where all the exciting board meetings take place! Don't miss it, guys. The Game Council will decide for the masses what is fun and what is not. Obviously a very hip and happening place. Totally not sponsored by an out-of-touch Silicon Valley mogul trying to herd us into a metaverse or something along those lines...

I think I've contributed all the constructive ideas I've got on this subject, plus a little extra. So I'll shut up now. Hopefully some of my thoughts will be of use for your consideration.

---

Okay, one last bit of feedback...

A notification banner that appears at the top of questions that are really old... would be nice. Especially when the question will be irrelevant in the long-term, yet begins with something like:

"In the past 3 months, Gaming has grown to be one of the largest sites..."

I believed it. You punk'd me, completely. Good job featuring this question atop the Related section of the sidebar and click-baiting me into coming here! "Related" ... not necessarily still Relevant.

It's a bit embarrassing, but I will leave my answer up for comedic value. Sadly, the majority of feedback I left about the URLs and branding being confusing still applies, 11 years later! 🤣

Answer 10

We can't have a name now, aren't you forgetting all our social media are named according to our current name, unless you can talk to Youtube, facebook, steam and twitch.tv about changing our names, (all the others can be changed) about changing our name on those media I think this will be a bad idea.