The good folks over at Sore Thumbs are collecting some research on gaming pseudonyms and why you choose them. I'm looking forward to the resulting article and I hope that anyone who reads my blog can add their own stories. To help you folks along I'll share my deep, dark origin story. No family members were killed but I assure there was much emotional trauma. This is the e-mail I sent out:
Hello, my name is PQQ
This tale has a few steps to it so it requires some back story. I used to game at my friends house alot because I had a Nintendo Gamecube, but he had a PS2 (much jealousy on my part). He also had a very small TV which will come into play later. All of my friends were Diablo II fans to some degree so it seemed like the purchasing, playing and enjoying of Champions of Norrath was a done deal. It was but that's not the point.
The point is name creation. I'd chosen an elf character and I wanted the name to sound elfin. I also wanted it to start with a P because my real name does. I also wanted it to be funny, and dirty. So I started with Poo. I worked it into Poosalot. I ended with Poozaloz. This was elfin enough and many a hero (male and female, the name is gender neutral) would pick up the mantle and do great things.
Except for James Bond.
He was too real of a character to receive an elf's name. When it came to 007: Nightfire's multiplayer, every one needed to create their own profile to save control schemes and such. These profiles needed a name. With impatient friends surrounding me, I had to think quick. I also had to uphold my crass tradition so I'd decided on my first idea back in the Norrath days. I named my profile POO. Well, I thought I did.
Remember when I mentioned that my friend had a small TV? Well the game had an even smaller font and an awkward circle function to select letters. The end result was me choosing the wrong big, round letter next to P. My profile was now PQQ.
The rest is history. It's my gamertag and online handle, While Poozaloz is what I rename main heroines in RPGs to. It is also what I rename Epona too in all Zelda games, unless I decide that she should be LowRida.
Cheers, PQQ.
As a side note on my blog here: I haven't used either of these names in WAR. Poozalaz I didn't think would get past the name censors (I have since found out that you can be called Assblack and Critoris and not get flagged). I didn't want to assign a character my official PQQ tag for fear of not liking that class and having the name go to waste.
What, dear readers, are your naming habits? Do you use the name you gave your first D&D character? Do you rename RPG characters after crushes* or loved ones? Do you go with what you used to sign arcade machine high scores with? Is it a variation of snipe or master chief like half of Xbox live gamertags? Let me know.
*Lol to anyone who did this to Aerith. Double lol to anyone who did this to Aerith even after knowing what happens to her.
March 9, 2009
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I don't usually use the same character names when I go from game to game, and I (sometimes) name them based on the atmosphere of the game. My characters in CoX, of course, were themed to their various powers or abilities.
ReplyDeleteIn WoW I used the random name generator to get my mage's name, and I've used that for a couple things since just because I like it so much. I made a lot of alts in WoW that I never played but gave them names that I liked. Now I use some of those names as inspiration for my WAR characters. For instance, my Sorc started out as Indira, a name I had used for a warlock alt in WoW.
The reason I just use my real name for the blogging community (or my blog's name, sometimes) is because I just don't really identify with a single handle as a result of all my name variations.