78. The total number of titles that “the game currently known as WARSAW” tried on and dismissed before we decided to go with WARSAW itself.
When we set out with an idea to create a game based on the Warsaw Rising we knew there was one major obstacle to overcome. Not a lot of people outside of Poland – and not everyone in the country for that matter – knows or knows intimately what Warsaw Rising was.
This isn’t an accusation. Rather – stating the fact. And we don’t feel there is something wrong with it. We don’t come at anyone expecting them to know what Warsaw Rising was. Quite the opposite. The less you know – the better. Once you will play the game, that will change though.
But not because we will drown you with facts, thrust down encyclopaedia worth of trivia down your throat and expose you to multitude of stats. But rather by sewing the fabric of the Warsaw Rising into the game mechanics themselves. Don’t know how long the Rising lasted? You will, as this is how long you need to make sure your characters live. Not sure what “błyskawica” is? You will by picking it up on one of the missions and equipping one of your heroes with it. Not sure where Długa is? You will, by traversing it during your patrols. Wonder what or who the Silent Unseen is? Ok, you get the point.
Now. Making a game based on historical fact is one thing. Making sure anyone actually wants to play it is another. Main reason: not a lot of people care for the history of other countries. Not many care for their own. Lots of other things to do it turns out.
In order to interest people in the game about Warsaw Rising, we would have to not speak of the Warsaw Rising. At least not first. We wanted everyone to soak up the ambience. The visuals. The setting. The genre. And then, once we had the attention – there was no way to talk about the game without bringing up Warsaw Rising. At least as long as we had the right title. The one that would, without a doubt, indicate what the game was about. Easy.
There was no guarantee that this would work, but it did. Well the exclusive reveal with GameSpot and the amazing trailer by Human Ark with Brodka’s moving rendition of Varsovie certainly did help. But... we’ll get to that part in a couple of days.
Now back to the titles. We evaluated each of the candidates on a very subjective, 10 criteria scale. “Sequelability”, “Translationability”, "Freshness", “Memorability” were some of those. Our current title excelled in most of these. The only one where WARSAW actually underperformed is the one you can probably guess immediately. Yup. “Searchability”.
You probably want to know what some of the other names we considered were. “Heroes” (will get into that this Thursday), “63” (spoiler) and “Occupied” (uhh).
To make sure no stone was left unturned we went after some famous musical numbers (“No tears to cry”), movies (“The edge of oppression”, “Doomed Squad”), and everything "Streets": (“(…) of blood”, “(…) of sorrow”, “(…) of hope”, “(…) of fire”, “(…) of red”).
The longest running champion was the “Uncivil War”. At one point just a codename for the game it then morphed into a strongest candidate. “Collateral City” also scored high.
The search started on 12th of November, and almost to the day, two months later on 11th of January two victors emerged. Uncivil War and Warsaw. Warsaw itself a result of taking the saw and pliers to Warsaw War and truncating it a little.
Since we knew we wanted the game to be easily recognized both outside of Poland and in Poland, Uncivil war had to go. It just did not work in Polish.
And so, Warsaw, and subsequently WARSAW was born. Which was probably the last call as we felt we wanted to announce the game in February and wanted to go about it in the grandest way we could imagine.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves, as this takes us into tomorrow’s tale about the inspirations behind how we wanted everyone to find out our super secret game no-one knew existed was coming out later this year...