Why Rising Tail?

At some point in a game developers life, one has to decide on a name. You’ve got to associate that game title with the maker of said title, right?

Many indie devs simply go with their given name and publish their games under that name. Others use whatever internet alias they favored at that particular time. And then there are others who prefer to establish a studio name. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they think they are going to grow into a huge company (I sure don’t), it’s just a way to separate the person and the – in lack of a better term – “entity” publishing the game.

I thought long and hard about what I wanted. It just so happens that I’m Danish and my parents for some reason decided to give me an extremely Danish name. Only Danes can pronounce it. To the rest of the world, especially native English speakers, the combination of letters looks odd and they wouldn’t have the slightest clue how to pronounce it. So using my real full name was out of the question. For a brief moment I considered using a pseudonym, like authors some times use a pen name. But that seemed sort of disconnected to me. Not sure how to describe it, it just didn’t feel right. So I decided to use a studio name.

Now, as for the reasoning behind the studio name. Why Rising Tail? Two things, actually:

1. I wanted the name to be associated with a sort of “welcome home, good to see you” kind of feeling. Being a cat person I immediately thought of how cats greet their owner human slaves. WIth a raised tail! It may not make a lot of sense right off the bat, but every time I’ve had to explain this people always go “aah, of course!”.
2. It’s also a play on the term “long tail”. A long time ago I watched a GDC talk by indie game dev legend Jake Birkett of Grey Alien Games, in which he went over the concept of the long tail in video games and how you can survive as an indie dev through a catalogue of games. The gist of it is that a published game will see decreased sales over time, but it will continue selling regardless. And so, having enough games selling little but steadily, you’ll be able to make a living. I like that way of thinking way better than hoping to make that one big hit game, so I wanted to incorporate that into the name. Even if it isn’t obvious to anyone else than me.

With the name settled, the domain name bought, social media accounts secured and all that, all was fine. But I still, I would find it weird to sign off email, devlogs on Steam, social media etc by the studio name alone when everyone assumingly knows I must be a real person..

Fortunately I have a last name that is well known in many parts of the world. I even have a famous very distant relative in the US with the same last name (she’s an actor/comedian), so at least most Americans know how to pronounce it. That’s why I’ve also chosen to go by the name of Fey just to add that personal touch.