Discussion on "your brand"

Tuism

I'd love to hear what everyone thinks about branding oneself. I know that without a good game no amount of branding matters, so I'm by no means insinuating that branding alone will make one successful. But it's a small block in the mosaic of the road to somewhere.

So the question I'm trying to answer is:
What name should I put on stuff I make?

With me myself as an example, I'm Steven Tu. People know me as Steven Tu. Or Tu.
Online, I'm "Tuism". Mostly because I couldn't get "steventu" for any handles, surprisingly.
I have a company, called Twoplus Games.

Putting Steven Tu on stuff I make makes it harder to find me.
Putting "tuism" on stuff I make makes it easier to find me but that's almost like establishing the nickname as a company.
Putting "twoplus games" on stuff I make makes it feel meh since I don't really actively manage and update twoplus games content, in terms of twitter and website.
Putting "Steven Tu @tuism with Twoplus games" is a shitshow dog's breakfast. It's terrible.

Again, I'm not looking at this from the perspective of "this will make me famous" but more like "in case something goes right, I want it to go right in the right way".

What do you think? Am I overthinking this?

EvanGreenwood

I obviously moved my nick to my real name a while back. It's just easier, and I don't want anonymity or obfuscation of my identity. I want people to be able to search for "Evan Greenwood" and easily see who I am in real life.

For me anyway I thought that was better, and for me personally I didn't see any benefit from "BlackShipsFillTheSky" or whatever.

And in my case "Free Lives" doesn't mean me (as it's a lot more than just me, though initially it was just me). I expect with any company this could eventually become the case (i.e. TwoPlus Games could one day be three people).

Tuism

I personally would LOVE if I could just use steventu everywhere, but the world as it is didn't allow that so I kinda had to come up with a nick, and tuism was the shortest thing I could own, and so I ran with it.

So I really would like to use Steven Tu. But there's no @steventu or steventu.com.... As much as I'd love that :(

Elyaradine

I think using Tuism works fine, if that's what you're already using in most places and how someone might most easily discover more of your existing body of work.

You can change your Twitter username afaik, and you can also register steventu.com if you're really invested in that. I just don't really think there's any particular reason for you to change to that, because Tuism itself is catchy. (It's not the awful mess that "Elyaradine" is, though that's an terribly low bar. :D)

Tuism

tuism.com is taken :(
Has been since I was aware enough to look, and BY GODS NOTHING IS BEING DONE WITH IT :(

And so is @steventu on twitter :(
And "it" hasn't tweeted yet :(

I was contemplating getting tuism.co or .net or .org or .me or whatever. But man that's so.... second tier :P

Yeah I do think that using tuism is probably the best bet. At least it's 5 characters... "it's tuism. T-U-I-S-M". No, not like the number. No, not T-O"..... Annoying. But yeah, Elyaradine is pretty hardcore :P

bischonator

re the domain name;
You could add on verb ie, 'makes' or 'creates' or something clever. I'd rather do that than get a .co or .net else you will be explaining the extension constantly. IMHO don't make it overly complex, you want to be able to say (verbally) check out my site at xyz without having to spell it out.

watson

Hi Tuism I have asked myself a similar question , not so much for game dev initially but more for promoting art and new skills I pick up as I go along the way ,try to use your real Identity with your company brand when posting ,also a small plain logo placed consistently in your images will help associate your work with your name .Well that's how plan to do it .