2XKO – Naming Is Hard

Summary

Naming Is Hard

Welcome back to the Weekend Warmup.
There’s a programming joke from the 90s that goes: “There are only two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation and naming things.” I’m sure this is funny (I don’t know what cache invalidation is), but given the KOnversation earlier this week, I wanted to talk a bit about the process of how we named 2XKO, why it’s so weird, and why we love it anyway.
Before we get into it, this is a genuine look behind the scenes at what our team considered during the naming process, which took place across late 2022 and early 2023, over a year before it was revealed to players. Terms and conditions apply, this was our thought process at the time, not every game at Riot will follow this, remember this happened several years ago, yada yada. Let’s jump in!

The Project Formerly Known as L

There are plenty of places to read up on Project L’s history, so I won’t belabour it here, but we knew we couldn’t stay as an ephemeral codename forever. Riot used Project [#] as its template for all announced in-development games—mainly to give space to the crew responsible for naming to work from a blank canvas. In Project L’s case, players had already started to grow attached to the name, so though we had to break some hearts eventually, we went into it knowing we had to establish some ownability away from the R&D pack.

What Should a Name Say?

…

Read the full news on 2xko.riotgames.com →

Excerpt – the full text belongs to the publisher.