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CPL Europe

Monday, 19 June 2000 -
The Name Test ? 1 comment
Well, we took a good look at the name "Challenge Pro Mode" but to cut straight to the chase - no-one on the CPM team is excited enough by the alternatives out there to change. I quite liked "Challenge World Quake" but no-one else on the team does :P. And unless the CPM team are happy with a name change I'm not going to force one on them. There are also significant numbers of players who like CPM who say "don't change the name".

Aside from the fact that we don't think there is a better name, a large part of the problem is that changing the name is a BIG hassle so any alternative name has to be REALLY good or it just isn't worth it. I have tried to compare and "score" the alternatives on this page and the result is that CPM (promode) for many reasons actually scores very highly.

Why do some people get upset about the name? Reading through all the various commentary, there seem to be many reasons:

• Some people think "promode" is being made by picky "pros" who just won't adapt to the default game. They get annoyed because they think the "pros" are never satisfied with anything. If they are really "pros", why can't they just adapt to and master VQ3? The must be trying to change it to something they think they are better at because they suck at VQ3.

  The gamers making the mod simply think it is more fun and better for competition.

• Some people think the name implies that people who master vanilla Q3A must be "inferior" to those who master CPM. They think the name implies that "pro mode" is superior to VQ3 (rather than just different).

  While VQ3 players themselves may not be "inferior", the gameplay in CPM is designed to be more complex and more demanding. So yes, we believe that CPM IS superior to VQ3 for competitive play. That's only our view, of course.

• Some people think the word "pro" is the problem - that it implies you have to be a "pro" to play it, when anyone can play it or enjoy it.

  We think anyone can play and enjoy the mod. The word "pro" just means it's designed primarily for experts to play.

• Some people think the word "mode" is the problem - that it implies we are passing off our mod as an "official" part of the game, when it's not.

  We are not trying to pass CPM off as an "official" part of the game. It's pretty obvious that it's a mod made by some members of the Quake community. The word "mode" refers to the fact that CPM represents a different "mode" of gameplay.

• Some people think the name indicates our goal is to have CPM used by top-level competitions - such as the CPL, OGL, OGA and QIL.

  Sure, this is one of our goals, but not the primary goal. The primary goal is to make a mod that is fun to play and better for high-level competition than VQ3. We believe that if players like it and want to use it, then top-level competitions will choose to adopt it. We believe that CPM will only become used by the CPL etc if it becomes widely popular first.

There is no doubt that some people have gotten all upset over the name "promode" for these reasons (and probably more).

However, the CPM team believes "pro mode" captures the spirit of the mod well. We ARE aiming to make a mod for "pro level" competition use (whether it gets used or not is up to how popular it becomes). We ARE trying to make a mod that is more challenging and exciting than VQ3 (whether it succeeds or not is up to you to decide, but the name simply reflects our intention). "Pro Mode" is also nice and easy to say - it's a two syllable phrase, and it doesn't take up a lot of space.

This logo was made by . When I first saw it, I thought we'd cop more shit for stuff like "Challenge World Professional Game Design". LOL. But I was too busy to care, and Fuse had enthusiastically done this for us, unasked. As it turned out, no-one has picked on that tiny little detail, which is good. But a lot of people really like this logo, and any new name would have to pretty damn good for me to discard it.

Even if we found a name as good - the biggest obstacle to change is that it entails a lot of work - including re-doing our very cool logo work by Fuse, Oblivion, and other artists; changing a whole bunch of folders and files, and titles and words in our websites; and changing code and stuff in the mod itself. In addition, suddenly all the previous stuff we produced is now "branded wrong", and third-party websites will all become inaccurate.

Changing a name like CPM would produce a lot of confusion out there with people who had heard of CPM but didn't know about the change. Add all this stuff together, and we really would need to find one shit-hot name to replace CPM, or it is just not worth it. And among the alternative names - none are really that shit hot.

So I can tell you - the CPM team are not convinced that any of the names on offer are so good that changing is worth all the cost and hassle.

As for the people who get upset over our name - to be frank we can live with that. The CPM team don't take a whole lot of notice of what they say over there on sCary's MB. Personally, I think they are over-reacting and taking the "name" thing waaay too seriously.

Of course there are also some people who are opposed to the mod because they fear it will become popular and for them the "name" is a handy target to attack. There is little point in trying to assuage these people with a name change.

The only really good reason for a name change is if there is a name that is much, much, much better than Challenge Pro Mode. And we just don't think there is. We gave it a good shot, looked over the alternatives, thought about it, and came to the conclusion that ProMode does the job fine.

You can take a look for yourself and let us know what you think: Click here for "Doing the Numbers".