David Braben's Elite: Dangerous is confusingly similar to our indie game Dangerous
We've been developing our game for over 3 years, and have been selling it since late 2011. The lead character is named "Dangerous", hence the name of our game is Dangerous. It's a 3D space trading, piracy, combat sim in the vein of Elite, EVE Online, X3, Freelancer, etc.
This week, David Braben of Elite fame announced a true successor to Elite on Kickstarter which is awesome. I'd love to play it. The problem is he named it "Elite: Dangerous":
www.kickstarter.com . . .
While "Dangerous" has been used in numerous game names, I think the problem for customer confusion is great since both our games are in the exact same genre, and the names differ in only "Elite". I sent him a polite email early this week telling him about the potential conflict in naming and asked if we could come to a mutually amicable agreement, but no response has been forthcoming.
We're a tiny 2-man indie studio with relatively little means at our disposal, and Dangerous has been a labor of love that hasn't yet broken even in sales yet. In fact, we were planning to launch a Kickstarter later this year to get additional funding. So there's a very real possibility for name confusion, and people might think we're trying to copy Elite: Dangerous when that's not the case.
Here's a public record of our development:
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forums.toucharcade.com . . .
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forums.toucharcade.com . . .
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www.spacegamejunkie.com . . .
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spacesimcentral.com . . .
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steamcommunity.com . . .
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www.spacesector.com . . .
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forum.unity3d.com . . .
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www.gamasutra.com . . .
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www.reddit.com . . .
(Additional links and reviews omitted for the sake of brevity)
Our game is already available on PC, Mac, iOS, and Android starting as early as December 2011:
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whoisdangerous.com
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www.gamersgate.com . . .
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www.macgamestore.com . . .
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itunes.apple.com . . .
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play.google.com . . .
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www.amazon.com . . .
I will update the news with any response from David Braben.
Linh Ngo
Binary Helix
UPDATE: According to a source who has worked at Frontier, the name conflict was brought up before the launch of the Kickstarter, but it was ignored.
www.reddit.com . . .
