Larian Studios Forums Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis (English) Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis Divinity II: Why it is called "Ego Draconis"

In a world where games development is a multi dollar business you don't want sites and paper magazines to make jokes about the name of your game. I belief that to be very bad for business. Good names are catching and have a positive ring to them.
Having a game with a title that needs explanation by someone with a degree in literature or at least someone fluent enough in latin, is not really a catching title. It's more a title that will bring back all the fun people had over the name Divine Divinity, which isn't really a positive ring. I think it will hurt the sales of the game. That's my major issue with the name.

For the record: I couldn't care less about the title, as far as I am concerned it can be called Divinity 2 and the missing bathtub, I still would buy it and make any effort possible to create a strategy guide for it and tell everyone (if the game really is good) to buy it. So I will be gladly corrected by reality next year when the reviews will show up on the internet and magazines, without devoting an entire paragraph on the name.

Actually, even without an explanation to provide some depth to the meaning, I think the title is pretty recognizable as 'I dragon', which should be close enough not to confuse people. Even if it is interpreted as 'the dragon' etc, that still kind of gets the main point across.

I agree with Raze.

I didn't see too many complaints that you need to know something of Medieval Christian Demonology to understand what 'Diablo' is - but you would. Didn't hurt sales too much, there

There are plenty of names that make no sense unless you know the background, though - certainly far less than 'Ego Draconis'.

What exactly does 'Warhammer 40,000' mean? 'Baldur's Gate' tells you nothing. How about HALO? Or Crysis - which is not even a word? 'Mass Effect' is pure nonsense... You get the idea

What sells a game is not the name, but how well potential customers understand exactly what it's about and how much interest they have in what they hear. Some of the best selling games of all time have names that make little real sense. How clear would 'The Sims' be as a title to someone who didn't know what the games were about? 'Final Fantasy' means what exactly? Could be anything, right?

You get the idea, I'm sure. Interest people enough in the game and you could call it almost anything you want

Myrthos;
The difference here I think is that Divine Divinity was silly and redundant, while Ego Draconis sounds cool and mysterious. Even if its meaning is not immediately obvious (though draco/dragon is a no-brainer), I think the mystery would be a draw, not a turn-off, for the uninitiated.

If anything about the name is mentioned in future reviews, it will probably be in reference to the improved naming of the sequel. 'Cause there's no escaping the naming of the original.

I beg to differ. I'm convinced the Divine Divinity name hurt sales because of the reactions that you can find everywhere. Do some research on the opinions on the name of the game and the comments that people didn't want to touch it because of its name. I agree with you if you call those people stupid for not seeing past the name, but that doesn't take away their opinion.
Divinity 2 is bound to be compared to its predecessor with the stupid name. Does Ego Draconis put a stop to those discussions? I think it won't be as bad compared to Divine Divinity, but it isn't a name that would stop that debate. A debate you wouldn't want them to have in the first place.

Games are sold because people learn about their existance. Reviews, magazines, advertising, and hear say to name a few. There are plenty of people that don't inform themselves properly before making a purchase. And I'm sure you can't name a game anything you want unless you have the benefit of a lot of money or a big publisher.

Warhammer 40K followed a very strong title named Warhammer. It could have been named anything.
Halo was hyped for the release of the Xbox. It could have been named anything with Microsoft backing it.
Baldur's Gate is a name that isn't bad in my opinion. Not good either though, but not a name that raises any discussions.
Crysis is a stupid name in my opinion. But FPS games just sell a lot better than RPG's
Mass Effect is from Bioware, they have some track record as far as games are concerned, so they probably get away with a lot of names.
Ego Draconis follows Divine Divinity that ended up in the top 50 of worst names ever.

Like I said before I would have sticked with Divinity 2

...but Divinity 2: Ego Draconis sounds better...
I must admit that also Final Fantasy is perhaps a stupid name as another member said before...but sold milions of copies...

However I think that the name "Divine Divinity" is considered stupid for magazines,articles,previews and reviews...not for people...:people don't care about the stupidity of the name...;the magazines writers underline it as defect of the game. I remeber that when I bought DD in summer 2005 I didn' t care about its name...but I liked (I only play few hours) its graphics, its style, its music , its dialogues...etc...

I think that a name is very imporatant for a person, for films, for games ect...but I don't think that people are so stupid to judge a game only for his (stupid?) name...

if DD sold not many copies...the problem I think is that publisher did not publicize too much the game...imho...

Myrthos & Juanpablo...

Divine Divinity is a stupid name - no question at all. But honestly I think the main problem was a lack of publicity. I'm pretty sure I'd never heard of it when I saw it (I know I knew nothing about it) and while I appreciate that Larian just don't have the resources to do a massive Blizzard-level push I think it was that combined with the name that hurt, not the name alone.

The number of people who are bored enough to pick up a game they have never heard of with a silly name... Well, it's not gonna happen very often...

the same thing that I think and underline in my last post...
I think that the publisher and not Larian Studios didn' t make too much publicity (as Elliot said) for the game...
Why?
we don' t know...
budget I think...

Ehhh...still, you're talking about the first game here, and like I said, there's nothing to be done about that title or the negative comments and feelings it generated, except to not repeat the same mistake. I too think Divinity 2 would have been sufficient, but Ego Draconis isn't going to land in any bad names lists.

There are a significant number of people who make game purchases as impulse buys in retail stores. This demographic will be influenced strongly by name and box art. I can certainly see people not picking up DD to check out based on the name, or their perception of the box art. With ED, though I don't think the name will give a negative first impression. Even if it does, though, presumably having a dragon on the box (I assume) will more than make up for that, for those interested in fantasy themed RPGs.

Like other have said, positive coverage or publicity also overcomes negative connotations of the name. DD didn't get much marketing, and a few weeks after release I rarely saw it on store shelves around here (when I did I'd make sure it was in front, though ). Hopefully ED will do better in that regard.

And I hope these comments or these, which are triggered by the first name remain an incident.
I don't think Ego Draconis is a strong name, but as I said before on a personal level I couldn't care less what it is called. We can agree to disagree and that I'm the odd one out on this one
I'll gladly be proven wrong on this subject too.

It's not that we hade a real choice about the name Divine Divinity. When we decided to have a go with CDV it was in the package. And believe me, we tried to convince them otherwise.

For Div 2 now it's just a subtitle and a matter of taste anyway I guess. We discussed several possible ideas for quite some time in the office at the end it was a fair team vote. And personally I like the sound of EGO DRACONIS. But then again I'm neighter a english nore latin native speaker.

I know Divine Divinity was forced upon everyone by CDV and that unfortunately the responsible person could not be fired
And meeting a native latin speaker would be cool

Look... *hints at the "day of the tentacle" time machine*

Nice to have one of those around, let's go and find a Latin girl

There is a new backstory entry at The Locus inn, which has recently moved from RPGDot (which is no more) to the RPGWatch realms.

Look here: http://www.locusinn.com/#10523

I love the name Ego Draconis. While most people won't know exactly what it means, any one with half the sense of a farm-raised turkey will know it has something to do with dragons. And IMHO, box-art will have a lot more to do with people buying it on impulse than a name. If the cover of a box has great artwork, with dragons, battlefields, and fires, it barely matters what the name is

Let's hope so!

Please send this to the publisher of and tell them they lost half the sense of a farm-raised turkey

I was wondering, about hte name alson. Can you ride dragons or horses in this game?