What's in a name?

Riverini pinged me today regarding the naming contest that he's having for EVE Online's next expansion over at EN24.

His idea of allowing people to up-vote their choices broke badly, with some people trying to influence the results in their favor by up-voting their own submissions and down-voting others.  So he asked me to come up with a list of who I would pick if I were going to judge.  It's something I didn't mind doing, so I read through all seven pages of entries and picked ones that I liked for his two categories: serious entries and funny entries.  Here's what I sent him:

Serious:
1st: Hallan Turrek	Eve Online: Reflections
2nd: Silentskills	EVE Online: Rebirth
3rd: Libria Kyzal	EvE: Promisius
Funny:
1st: cryingblood	Eve Online : The Sims Expansion Pack
2nd: David Grogan	Eve Online - The Nex Generation
2nd: Sahara Sena	EVE: The NEX Generation
3rd: RipardTeg	EVE Online: The Hangover
Closest to what CCP will actually use, I think:
DangerosoDavo	Eve Online: Adapt

For my first serious choice, I really like "Reflections".  I like the double- and triple-meaning of it, particulary for this expansion, which is going to be about dichotomies: spaceships vs avatars, Empire vs null-sec, subcaps vs supercaps.  Though "Dichotomies" might be a good name too, come to think of it.  ;-)  "Rebirth" as a second choice is obvious -- that's what CCP hopes this is what the winter expansion represents.  "Promisius" struck me as the sort of almost-nonsense word that CCP might go for, and of course is a variation of "promises."  And making those is what CCP has really been about this year...

For the funny ones, not much to say about them except those choices made me laugh.  I wasn't sure who posted "The NeX Generation" first.  And yes, I picked myself for third.  Deal with it.  ;-)  I still think mine was pretty funny.  I subtitled it: "Whoops!  We got drunk and forgot where we put our space ships."  But yeah, I like "The Sims Expansion Pack" the most.  That one actually made me laugh out loud.  A couple of others made me giggle: "EVE Online: Eyjafjallajokull", referencing Iceland's famous volcano, did.  So did "EVE Online: Springtime for Hilmar".  I'm sometimes a sucker for puns, and that one was really clever.  But both of those options were probably too clever to actually pick.

That said, I think DangerosoDavo is probably closest to what CCP will actually name the expansion.  The word "Adapt" brings up all sorts of mental images of where CCP wants to go with this expansion, and it's a good strong marketing word and throws a lot of subliminal messages at the player base, to boot.

Be interesting to see what CCP actually decides to go with!  And it'll be interesting to see how Riverini decides to choose his winners as well.  ;-)