The other day on the official Game Discover Co (worth the price of pro subscription) Discord Server, Simon Carless pointed out that Tiny Build has started layering genre keywords into their game titles: 

ALL WILL FALL is officially titled “ALL WILL FALL: Physics-Based Survival City Builder”

Similarly I Am Future official title is “I Am Future: Cozy Apocalypse Survival”

Is this a trend? Should we be adding ridiculous sub titles? Should we be offended? Should Valve crack down on this?

In today’s blog I wanted to investigate.

Are game names getting longer?

I was curious so I looked at all 94,371 games that released between 2016 – 2025 (when Valve allowed regular people to release on Steam).

Here is the average character count for game titles:

Number of the words in the title. Histogram of all words. Most common is 1-3 words.

What is the distribution of characters in the title?

So doesn’t really seem to be getting worse. No problem here.

Are more games using the “:”

But, are more games using the tinyBuild trick of adding a bunch of genres after the colon? 

I guess not, the percentage of games doing this has actually been going down in the last few years. 

Not a trend

So overall, keyword stuffing doesn’t seem to be a problem. Maybe some new producer over at tinyBuild got this crazy idea to increase sales by 10%. Good luck to them. I hope they get a promotion or something.

But overall I am not worried this is a larger trend. 

Steam is the home of hardcore gamers where finding and playing games is their hobby. They study every game, know the genres, evaluate and debate what are the best games. 

Keyword stuffing is useful if the customer base is a low-information buyer who just picks up whatever is at the top of a list. I could see this working in the mobile space. But, tricking Steam shoppers into finding your game via keywords might make you look “cringe.”

But hey, it is worth a try! Always good to experiment. 

But I was curious, after collecting nearly 100,000 games, who are the outliers in the naming game?

Longest game names

Sanic The Hawtdawg: Da Movie: Da Game 2.1: Electric Boogaloo 2.2 Version 4: The Squeakquel: VHS Edition: Directors cut: Special edition: The Musical & Knackles (the winner with 159 characters). Note this game has been pulled from Steam (I can only guess why). You can see some details about the game on steamdb.

For a long time, I built plans to steal a boy at work and didn’t dare to do it, but I happened to get him, so now I can do all sorts of T H I N G S with him…

VR Time Travelling in Medieval Towns and Islands: Magellan’s Life in ancient Europe, the Great Exploration Age, and A.D.1500 Time Machine

a completely normal dating simulation that is definitely completely sweet, innnocent and normal: SOMETHINGETH ANIVERSARY EDITION

Spaceman Wakes Up In A New World, The Government Has Been Experimenting On People On the Moon and Created Crazy Vine Monsters

The best selling game of the MEGA Long title genre is this one: 

BRAZILIAN DRUG DEALER 3: I OPENED A PORTAL TO HELL IN THE FAVELA TRYING TO REVIVE MIT AIA I NEED TO CLOSE IT

Here is the trend of games with over 70 characters:

So yes, there is a trend for a subgenre of games that use this Meme-tinged, glitch-aesthetic with super long titles. It basically coincides with Valve opening the floodgates with no restrictions on what games get on the platform.

But at most it is only 20 games.

Speaking of which …

Does the title length correlate with sales? 

No, no it does not. 

Couple of outliers

This is the longest AND most successful game titles:

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition (43 characters)

I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator (12535 reviews)

Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition (156332 reviews)

Smallest titles with just one character

Forget long titles, what are the shortest titles?

Since 2016 there have been exactly 6 games that contained only 1 character. Here they are:

  • 1
  • 7
  • 8
  • b
  • S – this game has never been reviewed (it came out last December). Maybe we should surprise the developer and leave them 10 reviews
  • ∞ – Also has only 1 review. Maybe we can help them out.

And if you are wondering if they help sales, they do not. 

SEO Doesn’t matter (Search Engine Optimization)

Anytime someone asks for advice on Reddit about their game name there is always a comment like this:

My hot take is … I don’t think SEO matters that much when it comes time to name your game. You can create games with “horrible SEO”

The reason, Steam has an extremely high search ranking and Google is pretty good at finding games that you type into the search box. For example: from the list of 1 character games above I was able to find all of the games as the first google search result just by searching “<game name> game steam” The only exception is the game “1” because the developer changed the games name to the double emoji of “➕1️⃣” 

Seriously, try it. Search S game steam or even infinity symbol steam

Those games will be the first or second results.

So as long as you aren’t naming your game a combination of emoji characters, you will be fine. 

I just don’t think Steam shoppers who are looking for a new game randomly type stuff into the google search box like “New Openworld Survival Craft.” Shoppers typically use festivals, streamers, reddit, social media to find games. The only reason people use google to find a game is if they hear about it somewhere else and want to wishlist it. If they go to the effort to use google to find it, they will keep trying until they locate it. 

And as I showed with the one-character games, it isn’t hard to find a game using google. 

Name your game something that can be understood when shouted across a noisy convention floor

The more important naming convention you should consider is if you are at a show, or meeting someone at a crowded bar. Whoever is asking about your game name should be able to hear it, then spell it correctly when typing it into their phone.

So don’t name your game “The revenge of ga’t’ri’ju’zzs”

Or “Tale of the pi’th’ri’zysh’mith and the hunt for Ni’pli’do’m’rigis”

Or “Mike Krzyzewski’s Free-Throw Challenge”.

Or a chain of generic game words like “Curse of the Legend of the Mystery of the Sages of the Spirits.” Nobody is going to remember if it is “Legend of the Sprits of the Sages” or “Mystery of the Legend of the Sages”

Successful games spread by word of mouth. If a fan of your game has to write down your game’s name so their friend can find it, that is bad.

Similarly, Content Creators on youtube are one of the major sources for visibility. You need the youtuber to be able to say your game’s name correctly without thinking about it, and the viewers should be able to search for it. Typically, people watch youtube on their phone, but play games on their PC. So when a game on Youtube looks interesting to them, people put their phone down, walk over to their gaming PC and type in the game’s name either into Steam search or via Google. When you get covered by a big name youtuber you will notice your store page traffic will go up in the categories of “Search Suggestions” and “Direct Traffic: google.”

What is in a name?

On Steam I think the most important thing a name does is give people the “vibe” of your genre and theme at a glance. Shoppers spend seconds scanning lists of games that are recommended to them. If they see a game that fits their favorite genre, they will click to read more. 

Valve gives you just a few places where you can hint at your genre, so you need to be smart about it. Use a combination of Capsule (aka thumbnail), game title, and tags to get your genre across in those long lists of games.

I grabbed a screenshot of today’s Popular Upcoming and blacked out the tag list. 

Based only on Thumbnail and title, can you guess the genre?

Do you think “Kingdom Come Deliverance II” is a wholesome, cute game about managing your cat cafe?

Do you think “Kitchen Wars: Appetiser” is a Horror game?

Is “Cinema Simulator 2025” a gritty World War 2 multiplayer FPS?

Of course not. You can glean a ton of information in seconds just by the capsule + title.

Here are the results?

Ironically, I think you don’t want your title to be so unique that nobody knows what it is. It has to give some hint to the viewer as to the genre. But you also don’t want to be a word salad of common terms (like “Curse of the Legend of the Mystery of the Sages of the Spirits.”)

There is no formula of how much difference is too different. Games are an artform that relies on good taste. You need just enough of these secret shibboleths to hint at your genre without sounding like a cliche.

Here is my suggestion on how to test a title:

  1. Come up with a title
  2. Go to an arcade or bar
  3. Yell it at someone
  4. Have them write down what they think they heard
  5. Ask them what genre and type of game they think it is

Common genres and the most common words

I was curious what some of the trends are for each genre. So I took the 94,371 game titles, extracted the games based on genre, fed them into ChatGPT and asked it to give me the most common words, and generate some example games based on those words. 

Not saying you should use these (some of them were really bad). But what I find interesting is you start to get a sense of the “vibe” of the titles depending on the genre.

Also as I was doing this I noticed that some genres use the “title colon” more frequently than others. 

As I showed in the graph above, on average, 13% of games used a colon. Look at the genres that are above and below average. Wholesome and Open World Survival Craft were the biggest offenders with over 16% using it vs only 8% of puzzle platformers. 

Wholesome

Colon Ratio: 16%

Most common words

  • cats
  • hidden
  • tale
  • puzzle
  • full
  • shapes
  • lost
  • game
  • christmas
  • memories
  • simulator
  • seek
  • City

GPT Fake Generated Names:

  • Whiskerwood Chronicles
  • Hidden Kittens: Secret Garden
  • Potion Paws: Alchemy Tails
  • Doodle Cats: Cozy Sketchbook
  • Meowsterpiece Puzzle Quest
  • Tiny Tales: Feline Adventures
  • Garden Paws: Bloom & Nuzzle
  • Mystic Manor: Secrets of the Stray
  • Cozy Critters: Snug in the City
  • Lost & Purrfound: A Cat’s Journey (CZ Note: This is my favorite, Purrrfound isn’t even a pun, you just added Purrr to a word, GPT is such a hack writer)

Side note, I removed a bunch of hidden object 100 Cats games. Here are some of their titles: 

  • Hidden Cats – Christmas
  • Hidden Cats – Halloween
  • Hidden Cats – Haunted Mansion
  • Hidden Cats – Pirates
  • Hidden Cats – Snow
  • Hidden Cats – Spooky
  • Hidden Cats – Winter
  • Hidden Cats – Zoo

Horror Games

Colon Ratio: 13%

Most common words

  • horror
  • night
  • escape
  • dark
  • house
  • backrooms
  • dead
  • nightmare
  • edition
  • lost
  • Last

GPT Fake Generated Names:

  • Nightfall: The Last Escape
  • Echoes of Horror
  • Shadows in the Dark
  • Midnight Asylum
  • The Cursed Escape
  • Nightmare Descent
  • Eternal Fear
  • Whispers in the Fog
  • The Forgotten Horror (CZ note: my favorite of the bunch. Like, aaaah, I forgot I had arachnophobia! Ugh what a nightmare)
  • No Way Out

Open world Survival Craft

Colon Ratio: 16%

Most common words

  • survival
  • island
  • World
  • lands
  • simulator
  • planet
  • crafter
  • first
  • new
  • days

GPT Fake Generated Names:

  • Survival: Edge of Extinction (CZ note: also the name of the pized fan-made bootleg collection of the 1992 Megadeth world tour)
  • Prologue to the Unknown
  • Island of the Forgotten
  • World’s End Survival
  • Lost in the Prologue
  • Eternal Island: Survival Quest
  • Shadow World: Last Survivor
  • The Final Prologue
  • Forsaken Island
  • Survival Horizon

Puzzle Platformer

Colon ratio: 8.4%

Most common words

  • Adventure 
  • Puzzle
  • Escape
  • World 
  • Super 
  • Cat 
  • Time
  • Edition 
  • Space)
  • Ball
  • Journey
  • Maze
  • Lost
  • Up

GPT Fake Generated Names:

  • Pregnant J (cz note: I really want to see what this game would be)
  • Drawn McSkinBones
  • Rescuer Moonstone
  • Sweetie Summon Coins (My favorite, this is just wishcasting)
  • QuantumLeaper Cluster
  • Balling Harvest Snack Rocketfingers (Go home GPT you are drunk)
  • Constellation Terraforming Oxygen
  • C1 Zero

Simulation 

Colon Ratio: 13%

Most common words

  • Simulator 
  • Manager 
  • Tycoon
  • Shop 
  • Idle
  • Life
  • Football
  • World
  • My
  • City

GPT Fake Generated Names:

World Simulator: Prologue

Football Tycoon Manager

  • My Life: Idle City (my favorite. A self-deprecating way to say you are boring. This also sounds like a coming-of-age graphic novel where the narrator struggles after her dad moves the family across the country but is finally able to make friends once she rediscovers her love of drawing manga)
  • Ultimate Shop Simulator
  • City Builder Tycoon
  • Life Manager: The Game
  • Prologue to a World
  • Idle Football Empire
  • Simulation Nation
  • The Great City Manager

First person shooters

Colon Ratio: 13%

Most common words

  • War
  • Zombie
  • Survival
  • Game
  • Dead
  • Space
  • Battle
  • World
  • Project
  • Last 
  • Escape

GPT Fake Generated Names:

  • Guardian Whip
  • Wizards Wick
  • Blade Entanglement
  • Hellscreen Spider
  • Mof Sunrise
  • Oblivity Speedy
  • Peak Modern Dissolution
  • Farmland Protocol Theory
  • Cluppets Alien Tyrone
  • Zombcube Parkour
  • Slime Wish False
  • Kunkunnight Flighting Reboot 

City Builders

Colon Ratio: 12%

Most common words

  • City 
  • World 
  • Prologue 
  • Simulator 
  • Kingdom 
  • Story
  • Town 
  • Edition 
  • Builder
  • Village 
  • My
  • Factory
  • Empire 
  • Island
  • Survival

GPT Fake Generated Names:

  • Civilizations Avalon Moons
  • Digital MMO Work Rebuilder
  • Line Soap Island
  • Tuin NSFW Festival Inn
  • Rangers Tristia
  • Unexpected Saving Ellaria University
  • Blooming Medieval
  • Solar Land Technotopia
  • Aspera Moento Origins Challenge
  • Downtown Atomic
  • Tower Have Estate 4
  • Cards Minute Version
  • Meeple Biz Typing