We’ve been trying to join a non-profit (NPO) during the last 6 months (which I was originally hoping to make a nice surprise announce a few months ago)
Sadly it just keeps dragging on for months, and we’re now in a deadlock between the various entities involved due to the Xenko trademark. Sadly I can’t go into all the details (NDA).
Somehow I have got a feeling it might be wiser to just rename the engine and put that behind us.
This will probably require a week or two of work once the name + logo is decided.
While the renaming is not completely decided yet, I would like to be more transparent and involve the community this time.
So in the case it goes through, I would like to ask for name and logo proposals!
Some requirements:
Need something available as a domain and SNS (twitter etc.), so probably a made up word (like Xenko) works best.
Logo probably better to be single color/flat so we can keep various color variants like we do today.
Oh, all this legal stuff is really tiresome if you just want to develop and move on…
From my personal perspective, if possible, I would try to keep the name. It’s short and quite unique on search engines.
A rename would lose all internet history, search results and links. Also namespaces, repositories and potentially method names in code would have to change and that’s quite some work users would have to do in their current projects… I’d be very careful with that and only do it if it’s absolutely necessary.
However, a logo redesign with a new look might freshen up Xenko’s appearance while it keeps the required workload to a minimum…
That said, I’d still be interested in what names and logos people come up with. So don’t be bothered by my concerns and shoot away…
The legal stuff is really tiresome, which is what renaming is meant to alleviate. We could really benefit from moving on and getting back to development by performing a rename.
Xenko’s history is pretty minor in comparison to say, Unity or Unreal. A new name should have been picked when the project went open source, so it would be easier to break away from the commercial history.
Unity and Unreal have very easy to remember, purposeful names. Unreal makes you think what it can achieve is “unreal”. Unity is many things coming together (indies, AAA, mobile, asset store etc.)… Xenko means… uhhh? What? Was it Zenko? Xanco? Xenco? It is just some random word with legal issues, the only benefit being it is unique and is previously associated with the engine (which isn’t much of a benefit).
I recommend a strong, purposeful low-syllable name like Unreal and Unity. I also think we have to consider our small developer footprint and turn it into a positive. The first suggestion that comes to mind:
Focus Engine.
The “Focus” engine isn’t trying to be everything for everyone (e.g. Godot / Unity), but focusing on the things indie developers need to work the most: performance, stability, ease of use etc. You could even make FOCUS an acronym:
Free
Open Source
C#
U…
S…
Need some help on the last two letters, but that is a pretty good, relevant start.
Can the NPO be formed separately without the ties explicitly to Xenko and still achieve its goals? Like this NPO maintains -> this code base?
Why does the NPO need tied to the Xenko trademark?
A rename will reset progress (and Silicon Studios) the community has made on getting the engine out there. I think it will take quite a bit to recover, I imagine there was also an setback when it was Paradox.
If I understood more the drive to move to an NPO maybe it would make more sense.
I will support the engine though even if we have to rename it… already on the boat with the rest of you. .
Naming and branding are huge, they can make or break products.
No idea how the trademark business works. I would have thought that since Xenko is opensource licenses, this would not matter anymore.
How many or what kind of legal issues could the name ‘Xenko’ cause in the future?
Although I think renaming would in the long run be a good choice, for now it just doesn’t seem to be worth the time. There many other things that could use Xen2’s valuable time I think. Currently joining an NPO doesn’t seem to outway the legal issues with Silicon.
Whatever choice is made, I wont stop me using the engine. For now unfortunately this does holds me back on making videos. I will keep focus on improving the written documentation for now.
I like the SharpEngine name. Short and packs a bit of power.
I’m curious if they have a price they’d sell it for, if we could raise a little public funds. Shame to waste money on a name though.
Asking for public name submissions is a bit dicy, as a good name is likely to be registered by a viewer before you select it. However, in the interest of helping out, here are some names with available .com domains…
nuxenko.com / nuzenko.com / nuzento.com / nuxento.com - (might be close enough to create legal trouble, but I registered these and will donate them if you want them… contact me at davidj at gmail dot com)
Sad news, I would like to keep the name, but if you have to change the name and logo, I would set a little more criteria for it.
The name, in addition to uniqueness, should sound relatively quickly and easily.
The name should be easy to remember and remain in memory. Sounds and syllables must be well matched.
I would add to the logo the requirement of quick recognition and not being overloaded with unnecessary elements and details.
And why not organize a contest at the end of which all members of the community could vote for the best of it?
In this case, let’s get ready for variant B. In case there is a need to rename the engine, we will have a new name and a new logo that will save a lot of time on “change shoes”. Let’s create a separate topic somewhere or a branch where everyone will offer several variants. For example, I have some ready-made developments.
SharpEngine sounds good to me, and captures one of the major selling points, but if that’s a moment’s hassle in itself, then something else. FocusEngine also sounds good.
If it were me, I’d make the change right away, and not waste another minute wrangling over the old name. I’d say there’s barely any recognition of it, and of course it was the Paradox Engine before that. I think it would do the project far more good to focus on the work that will actually make people care about it. Bite the bullet, and let people start creating things for a stable identity.
EDIT: Just to add, I think the downsides could be outweighed by getting some headlines - “Xenko Engine is now Whatever Engine”. You could do a press release explaining how the new identity is part of putting the project on a sound footing as an open source project (which also publicises that point again), with the proper oversight of an NPO, free from the baggage of trademarks.
I like the name Xenos, but looking at name’s origin you will find: Xenos, (old) Greek word meaning “stranger” or “alien”*. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenos
Its ‘hospitality’ counterpart: Xenia ,sound also nice.
Xenial Engine could be OK. There was an Ubuntu release a while back codenamed Xenial Xerus, but other than that it’s not something you see around too often. I think it would be a stretch for Canonical to make a fuss about it… but you never know with big companies.
Without going in to much detail: I believe that the NPO in question (.Net foundation), requires Silicon studio to sign a certain contract, which silicon studio is unwilling to do.
Either way, it brings us to the point were again Xenko is held back with legal stuff. That is why the name change has advantages that outweigh the downsides like new branding, lots of renaming work etc.
I wouldn’t underestimate re-branding… It involves much more than just a design mock-up and name ideas. It should be done properly by a design studio with experience in the field when we have some ideas and directions…
Not saying a professional design team is a bad idea but if your assuming all freelance designers/web developers are garbage then I would have to disagree with you. Yes some people just spout names and designs without regard to the actual company background/vision in mind. Some of the best designers/companies I’ve worked with actually rely heavily on freelancers that are not part of any “design studio”.
I think, if there’s going to be a careful consideration of branding and identity, then first there needs to be some clear decisions made about what the direction and focus of the engine is. I think Godot has the entry-level pretty much sewn up, and its logo and identity reflect that - it’s fun and friendly. I think Xenko needs to think about its goals and positioning before it could do its branding effectively.
Yeah, as Greek word, you’d expect to get a lot of hits in unrelated contexts, but it also seems to be the name of an Xbox emulation project, which I’d say rules it out.
just remove the vowels? XNK? but it’s already a lot of things
also I may point out to my knowledge this is the only game engine which is separated into multiple nuget packages (or multiple “independent” modules), maybe emphasizing that would be a cool source of a name.
you can also do what GNU did (GNU is Not Unix):
DDNX (DDNX is Definitely Not Xenko) you can omit “definitely” and then it’s just DNX, buut it kinda sounds something from the 90’s.
You can see that the first letter can be anything for this, just don’t be X (googling XNX yields porn)
OK, I put some ideas together. Brief and rough, as I don’t want to spend too much time on it unless there is some interest. I’ve put it on Canva, link below.
Ceyx
not very related with the original name but I liked the story behind it, it is short, it hasnt so many results on google and it keeps the letter “X” (and the “e” for sure) which can differ by the others (size/color/type).
I’ll also leave this here, it’s done with an AI name generator at https://namelix.com/
Just enter some keywords you associate with the engine and set the naming constraints. I’ve did it a few times and these are the ones I favorited. I think it’s not a final solution, but rather an inspiration…
I grabbed cimitar.org and xardox.org, just in case. I’ll donate them and sign over to the project if wanted, of course.
I wouldn’t worry too much about dotcoms for opensource projects these days. Many major projects have only the dotorg (including Blender and Godot), which is all that’s really needed. In theory someone could attempt some funny business with the dotcom, but in practice, once a project is well-established, it’s barely a problem.
You seem to have missed Cimitar off the list, if you could please include it.
Could I suggest that we don’t proceed on a straight vote on a list of names? Bear in mind that we’re not merely choosing a name, but a brand. Typically one would not start by picking from a list of names alone, but look at those names in the context of a logo, and a brand concept.
I think it would be a good idea to invite others to put forward brand and logos ideas (along with the name), before we make a choice. Picking a name in isolation, and then trying to attach a logo and concept to it is not really the way to go, IMO.
i think the name should be quite “mainstream”… let me explain.
if you look at other/similar company names like unity, unreal engine, blender, maya, cinema 4d, houdini, … one can see, that they have some things in common:
easy to spell (and so to remember)
mostly non-artificial (these are real words)
tech/tool related (cinema is a good example, since it’s a tool that can be used to make movies)
most of the names are lucky finds (a common word, that is not used very often [in that context]
a more mainstream or common name would also reflect xenkos current goals:
being now open-source -> welcome and include everybody in opposition to a relatively small target group
xenko wants its community to grow -> targeting a maximum big group won’t work with a name that targets a small and nerdy niche.
i totally agree, that focusing and emphasizing only few core features is key. i think that open-source and c# are the most important ones that also distinguish from the competitors. so i like proposals like @jdee s The C# engine tagline or names that go into the same direction like opengine that @tonfilm posted.
last, i think this re-naming is a really big and important decision that should not be chosen in a hurry. best would be to consult a design studio or similar that has experience in branding and naming.
sorry for being late to the naming party and of course, this is just my 2 cents and i’m not an english native speaker.
@sebl I doubt that xen has the funds necessary to do this kind of thing so unless someone proposes it that won’t be feasible.
The biggest engine didn’t rely on that kind of services either, and to be frank they actually have pretty terrible names (unreal engine and cry engine are kind of cringe worthy names, godot doesn’t have much to do with game dev’, it’s just a reference to either a microsoft release code or a play), I’m sure it could help but I don’t think we have a choice here.
As for the rest of your point, definitely, I’ll include a short description of what the user should look for when voting at the top of the poll.
@jdee@sebl
How about using the voting process to filter out names, use the top 10 or top 5 for logo design proposal and pick the best from there, how does that sound to you ? This should resolve a couple of issues that you have with this process.
Or would you rather want us to postpone this ? We really have to do it soon as more time passes and the worse it’s going to get for seo, tutorials and co. 23 days passed since xen made that announcement but if you feel like this is too soon I’ll cancel it for now.
@jdee
Thank you for catching that issue with SeaShark, @Aggror I can’t accept the name as it is but you should be able to find a similar pun by changing a couple of words ?
Sorry I didn’t specify why certain submissions could not be included:
Excluded Submissions:
Xenomorph Engine:
Even if the usage is different and that word is fairly common, let’s stay clear of any potential copyright issues here.
DDNX (DDNX is Definitely Not Xenko):
Again no point in taking risks here, this name still ‘contains’ xenko.
Ceyx Engine:
Fairly obvious why.
Cimitar Engine:
Very close to Scimitar, the previous name of AnvilNext which is Ubisoft’s main engine.
While this won’t result in any copyright dispute let’s avoid any confusion.
Xenia:
Already used by an xbox emulation project.
Solaris Engine:
Solarus is an ARPG engine.
Glimpse:
It’s a diagnostic platform and a text indexing algorithm.
I’d just like to echo Sebl’s comments about a name being ‘mainstream’. Really no offence intended but most of the suggested names here are awful. Obscure, nerdy, clumsy and uninviting. The name needs to feel accessible to people beyond niche circles of interest. That’s why Unreal and Unity work so well. The name doesn’t need to be clever, novel, or contain a complex reference to some historical quality unimportant to most people.
I suggest solid, friendly, grounding and dare I say it, generic as more fruitful adjectives for a successful name. Sorry I offer no suggestions here for what one may be
Not that I would say that it’s too soon. The thing is, the name, the logo, and the brand message all inform each other - in the ideal world it would be done holistically. By constraining the possibilities of one variable, I think it introduces an unnecessary limitation; I’d say it’s generally better to vote on a list of fleshed out proposals (name, logo, brand concept, etc), rather than cutting down a list of names, and proceeding from there.
I do think perhaps we’re not quite there yet, and still evolving ideas.
I understand your point, but I think there are different ways to go. Obscure and/or nerdy names are a grand tradition in the naming of software, and I’d say anyone looking at programming their own game already has their geek credentials in order. I think it can be a problem if they are not easily pronounceable, but otherwise it’s good to be open-minded.
That would be nice but no one proposed anything of the sort yet and there’s very little chance that someone would do so, we just don’t have those sorts of talents within our community. If someone comes forward with a legit proposal I would cancel the process and see where this goes but I don’t think it is safe for the project to delay this more than necessary.
You showed interest in creating the logo for the engine, I am also willing to design a bunch of logos but I wont do it before having at least a set of agreed upon names, without this the name I would choose might not be in line with the community/xen which ultimately will just be a waste of my time, that’s why voting on the names might be beneficial for those who end up creating logos, we’ll at least have a set of names that most people like.
If you guys feel like this is too soon feel free to tell me and I’ll postpone this but we can’t just leave this on the back burner, either send/notify us of some sort of proposal if you do want to work on the branding or provide us with a maximum time-frame that you feel is fair enough given the issues we talked about.
I think, though, that perhaps we haven’t given the community a chance yet to produce ideas beyond a list of names. There hasn’t been any clear request for more fleshed out proposals, and you were discouraging people from producing graphics until the name was settled. IMO, that’s not the way to go.
I think it would be much better to request more fleshed out concepts, that could then be discussed. For example, perhaps someone doesn’t like the names that occurred to me, but could see some potential in the “sharp C#” logo idea, and so we might then agree to focus on that, and see what we can come up with. Or not.
If people have other concepts, they don’t have to do a full-on brand presentation - just do a “back of a napkin” brand proposal and some rough logo sketches, as I did. I realise we could be wasting our time, as I most likely have, but I do believe it would be a more effective approach, likely to produce better results.
I fully support your decision to weed out some of the incorrect names as they do not fit by any criteria, they will only confuse many voters. I am for the logo to be created after choosing a name.
i happen to know that @sebl and @mrboni indeed have those talents. they are experienced designers and we should listen to their input in the same way as they will listen to us developers when it comes to API design…
One other thing I would say, is that in the original post at the top of the thread, the request was for both names and logos, and favoured a made-up word like ‘Xenko’ for uniqueness. So, that has obviously affected the suggestions we put forward. As I said, I don’t think made up unique words are necessarily a problem, but if we don’t mind some flexibility on the domain name, then we could maybe look at more familiar words, too.
That’s to say, if you don’t mind appending '-engine- to the domain name (as Godot does), or ‘3d’ (Unity was at www.unity3d.com for years), then there are tons more possibilities in line with what these guys are suggesting.
Can’t wait to vote and breathe new life into the engine, no matter what pessimistic forecasts may sound here, I’m sure that the engine is doomed to spread its wings again and make itself known to the whole world with renewed force!
I do regret shutting that down after having read one of your other posts, alright, there’s still too much to discuss about this and it’s not the best timing seeing as xen is out right now, I’ll postpone the voting process to leave us some time to figure things out.
How about trying again in two weeks if nothing comes up ?
@sebl@mrboni@jdee if you want to contribute, please do so, your help will be much appreciated.
I could arrange a cash prize to push the community to contribute with proposals but 200 is all I can do right now.
I’d say the delay is a good idea. I think we should look at the renaming as a relaunch; as an opportunity. To be brutally honest, I see a number of “also ran” opensource game engines out there, with three guys occasionally tinkering. I think Xenko has an extraordinary inheritance from Silicon Studios, and I see huge potential, but we’ll need to have a plan if it’s to flourish rather than flounder.
With regard to the cash prize, it could encourage some more fleshed out submissions. The downside is that it works against doing things in an open and organic way. I think it’s great if we could take bits of each other’s ideas, but spin them differently, rather than working competitively.
Not sure if name suggestions are still open, I did read every post, but it doesn’t really give anything away. My suggestion for a nomenclature would be Sprout Engine, why? Per definition Sprout means “to grow, spring up, or come forth as or as if a sprout” and that 's what I believe Xenko currently is, a small delicate flower that needs care and over time will grow into one of the big ones. Hopefully that doesn’t sound to cliche.
I am just thinking that you like ancient greek and the bringing to life aspect of the name which I love but how about Poiesis
Poiesis - Wikipedia
In philosophy, poiesis (from Ancient Greek : ποίησις) is "the activity in which a person brings something into being that did not exist before.
I also would like to suggest ratio3d. The reason being is that ‘ratio’ is latin for dimension, the .com is unused and it also gives it a professional name to entice companies to use it for their digital twins / virtual world which will help expand the development community for everyones benefit.
Maybe even gain autodesk support like Unity or integration with the laserscanner / geospatial scanner manufacturers like FARO.
I really think this software has great legs and I am going to promote it within my Utility company ( i can’t mention a name without going through the PR team).
Otherwise Xenko is already amazing and do you need an NPO when you can promote within the Digital Twin scene and become a Standard Marque and change a business model to suite while also keeping it opensource.
Hello guys, I’m compiling the list right now, I won’t include any new suggestions sorry.
Okay, here’s how I think we’ll move forward:
Let the community vote on the names they submitted and pick the ten highest. Create an open discussion around those ten and include @mrboni 's suggestions into the mix. Let people argue on those names, provide logos and try to reach a consensus.
We’ll start the voting phase tomorrow (saturday) at 8:00 AM UTC.
This is my first post…so please don’t be too judgmental…thanks
I was thinking about the new name: simgen (simulation generator engine) what do you guys think? You could have a oval neon around name like an atom moving along the oval…
Or ZENGEN-2.0 …2.6…3.0…3.4 - like Blender uses
(Could have yeng-yang symbol in front of name)
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