Ummmm Heel and Jetpack...

Even if you remove every iota of 3DGS syntax from the game, won't it STILL be 3D Game Studio and recognizable as such?

Honestly, I don't think that will solve the problem because no matter what you do to the verbal semantics of the game, it IS still 3DGS and everyone will know it anyways! You can change "acknex.dll" to "doug.dll" and everyone will STILL know that doug.dll = 3DGS, right?


And furthermore, if someone IS saavy eough to care about the game engine won't they...
a) Ask.
b) Ask again?
...and thus make this suggestion moot?


I'm all behind the core of your idea: if I personally want to remove all references to the game engine I use, perhaps it is a good option to allow it. I don't think there is any tangible benefit to it, but perhaps there is and I'm not seeing it. As a player, the game engine is beyond irrelevant and hence won't affect my decision to buy or not... and publishers know this. The only customer base that does care about engines is the Hardcore crowd and I will argue that this is the WORST demographic for any 3DGS product to go after (for exactly the reasons we are talking about). A (good) producer will know this, will know (or you will tell them) the demographic your game will work under, and make a decision accordingly. So if you are trying to make "Wow" or "GTA" with 3DGS, then yeah, a publisher will raise their eyebrow at you attemptint a AAA game for a hardcore audience with a AA game engine. If on the other hand you make casual games, then a publisher will look at you more kindly for that is a better demographic for our engine.


And I mean this in as nice a way as possible but if you are so ashamed of the engine you develop in, why not develop in others? If you answer is that it's not I that is ashamed but other (like publishers), then aren't you reinforcing that attitude by trying to hide the name? It's like saying "I know that my game was built with a crap engine; I just don't want YOU to know that it was made with a crap engine" and thus admitting to the publisher that it is a crap engine.

It all just sounds counterintuitive to me. None of the 3 clients that Jetpack lost nor any business that you lost Heel would have been any different had you been able to remove the Acknex IMO. If I had to guess, they rejected not your game but your development company. They didn't think you could do it and given 3DGS's "vaporware" rate, had good backup. In fact, it's not the game engine that we have to change but the community. Of course, changing a file name is easier than changing a community but there you have it: as long as the community makes poor games, the engine will be viewed as a poor engine. Which is actually a benefit for anyone that makes a good game for then they can say "Look how much I did with so little" (when of course we know that it wasn't too little to begain with)

Like I said in jetpacks thread: if a game is fun and it doesn't crash, the game engine is irrelevant. Hence we should see failures with investors and publishers as not failures of the game engine, but as personal failures for not making the game so fun that the game engine became irrelevant.