POLL: What do we do about the "DQ" acronym

#1

So everyone. Real talk. It’s too late to change the series name from “Defender’s Quest”, but we still have room to set a standard for the acronym. Want your opinions.

“DQ” is very simple and straightforward, but has two big problems:

Everyone thinks of Dragon Quest
Everyone thinks of Dairy Queen (in the USA at least)

I realized this early on and stuck to “DefQ” for the longest time, but man was that annoying.

Also what about the numbers? We will use roman numerals in the game title page of Defender’s Quest 2, but should we also call it Defender’s Quest II consistently?

So… what do you think? If you pick “other” post your answer as a reply after you vote.

I’m using Defender’s Quest 2 as the example here, but we’ll apply the same to DQ1.

  • DQ2
  • DQII
  • DefQ2 or DefQII
  • DQ:MoR (use the subtitle and drop the number)
  • Other

EDIT: The poll won’t let me add a new option, just edit old ones, so I stole DefQII (which had 0) for DQ:MoR, and rolled DefQII / DefQ2 into the same spot, as that doesn’t seem super popular and if it does win we’ll have a runoff.

2 Likes
#2

But… I thought Defeneder’s Quest was Something Different! Isn’t it?!?

#3

DefQ definitely sounds the best. I’ve been using DQ because I didn’t know it caused confusion, and was shorter.

#4

DfQ would be unconventional, but it would be letters only and “DefQ” is more awkward out loud. Also, I don’t like Roman numerals that much. The best solution is to become bigger than the “other” DQs…

#5

I think you just have to accept that you’re going to have some overlap with other series initials. :stuck_out_tongue: Fighting Fantasy and Final Fantasy share initials, for example.

I mean, you could go for ‘DQTD’ or something, but that’s a jumble of letters. I personally prefer Defender’s Quest 2, but looking through my Steam library, let’s see how my other games handle it.

Avadon / Avernum - Numbers and subtitles
Half-Minute Hero - Subtitle with number worked into it (‘The Second Coming’.)
Age of Empires - Numerals
Bejeweled - Number
Binding of Isaac - Subtitle
Bit Trip Runner - Number and subtitle
Divinity - Numerals
Dota - Numbers
Epic Battle Fantasy - Numbers
Puzzle Quest - Numbers
Saints Row - Numbers
Torchlight - Numerals
Trine - Numbers

This tells me absolutely nothing. :smiley: I think the Subtitle / Numeral / Number thing cycles like a fad. Some people don’t like buying sequels without having bought the first game, since if they see ‘2’ they immediately think it’s a direct sequel, so you might want to actually consider not calling it DQ2 / DQII at all.

There is some merit to calling the first one Defender’s Quest: Valley of the Forgotten (DQ:VotF) and this one Defender’s Quest: Mists of Ruin (DQ:MoR).

I actually find that kind of cute, now that I see it. Defender’s Quest: MORE! :stuck_out_tongue:

So, my votes are for DQ:VotF and DQ:MoR, I guess. Avoids the “Is it a sequel? I don’t wanna play it if I haven’t played the first one, I’ll be clueless” issue completely.

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#6

Huh! How didn’t I think of that earlier? However, DQ:VotF is still a big number of letters (6! + a special character!) for a name, I’d usuall go with VF (Valley [of the] Forgotten) to shrink it down while still making some sense. MoR DQ:MoR pls.

#7

This is an interesting train of thought. That is kind of why we originally had the subtitles, and we can always informally refer to the first game as “Valley” and the second as “Mists”. Hmmmm…

DQ:VotF / DG:MoR

I kinda like it. Let’s add it to the poll at last (believe you can change your vote if you want, let me know if you can’t)

#8

Honestly I thought your official acronym was DFQ, since a majority of the blog posts that I read, as I recall, used DFQ and not DQ [though I personally use DQ despite thinking of dairy queen as well]
I think DFQ will work, but ultimately it’ll be up to the fans to determine majority usage, even if the official isn’t what lines up with what fans use [I can’t recall an example off the top of my head atm, but I know that there is one.]

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#9

I can think of one downside for not using ‘2’.

People who casually played DQ might see ‘DQ: Mists of Ruin’ on the Steam homepage and not immediately at a glance know it’s new, if they identify DQ by ‘Defender’s Quest’ and never memorized ‘Valley of the Forgotten’. I have faith there aren’t too many people like that, though. :smile:

There’s also “Well, which one do I play first?”, buuut without numbers “Either one” is a valid answer.

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#10

DQ2 for me. With II I’d never know whether that’s a number or part of the abbreviation, and I’ve somehow never heard of Dragon Quest…

#11

I prefer the acronym DQ:MoR but then again that’s coming from 14+ Touhou games where the fandom generally does acronyms based on the English subtitle (EoSD, PCB, IN, PoFW, UFO, etc.)

Does that mean we have to make the first one DQ:VotF though?

#12

Yeah if the 2nd one is MoR then the 1st one’s gonna be VotF.

#13

Sooo, here’s an interesting idea.

We can directly see the dropoff rate between games and sequels now thanks to SteamSpy, can’t we?

So you could compare the dropoff between, say, Videogame 1 -> Videogame 2, and GameyGame and GameyGame: The Gamening.

If a game has been particularly bundled it might skew up the math, though, if only by merit of being redeemed by people who wanted other games. Also the amount of time he original game has been released / how many sales it’s been a part of could play a major role, so maybe this isn’t entirely reliable. At a quick glance, we have:

Binding of Isaac - Owners: 2,533,144 ± 86,178
Binding of Isaac: Rebirth - Owners: 829,183 ± 49,491

Half Minute Hero Super Mega Neo Climax Ultimate Boy - Owners: 379,431 ± 33,512
Half Minute Hero The Second Coming - Owners: 28,593 ± 9,206 (OUCH! Why?)

Avernum Escape From the Pit - Owners: 83,459 ± 15,727
Avernum 2 Crystal Souls - Owners: 7,877 ± 5,832 (3 years gap, but still, this makes me sad)

Deponia - Owners: 392,568 ± 34,086
Chaos on Deponia - Owners: 136,781 ± 20,131
Goodbye Deponia - Owners: 82,687 ± 15,654

Trine - Owners: 1,203,205 ± 59,568
Trine 2 - Owners: 2,104,256 ± 78,619 (Whoa, almost DOUBLE the original? It’s odd to see games step out of daddy’s shadow)

Torchlight - Owners: 1,384,806 ± 63,880
Torchlight II - Owners: 2,764,975 ± 89,988 (…or maybe just adding proper multiplayer functionality sells more copies)

Anyone else wanna look up some notable dropoff / rising sequel numbers?

#14

That would mean renaming the game midway, which is… weird. I really prefer VotF and MoR because the 2 games have NOTHING in common story-wise, so it’s useless to connect them with a 2.

#15

Final fantasy does do the number thing despite having nothing in common with each other… But if there are plans to have many more dq releases, then I’d understand going by subtitles, though that also means having to think up subtitles each time too :stuck_out_tongue:

#16

Bumping, because I saw this comment chain and it seems like an interesting analysis with regards to horror films at least.

I wonder why 3 is usually the limit for films before they change?