A saint among us (Dan Adams a.k.a. paramesis on Board Game Geek) decided to feed an artificial intelligence 17,000 game titles and see what kinds of game titles it would generate. What started originally as a discussion thread of a human-curated list of the funniest titles pulled from hundreds of generated titles has now lead to a Twitter account ( @boardnames) that is posting an absurd AI-created boardgame title every 8 hours (it’s worth following if only to get a chance to giggle three times a day.)
It’s a fascinating peek into boardgame trends, as well as naming conventions. You can pretty clearly see how licensing has proliferated in gaming: “Doctor Who: The American Revolution”, “Kung Fluxx”, “Hatting Wars: Warhammer 40,000”, “Battle For Catan”, and “Star Wars: Star Wars Edition” are pretty giggle-worthy.
As a matter of fact, all of the titles that include Star Wars are both slightly plausible and hilariously absurd: “Risk: Star Wars – Party Pack (Game)”, “Star Wars: Star Wars – Star Wars – Battle Card Game”, and “Star Wars: Elves of the Ancient War 1945-1965-1805” demonstrate both the structure of game nomenclature, the proliferation of the license, and the absurdity of having to include the license in game titles using it. A real game title that does use the license, “ Star Wars – X-Wing: The Miniatures Game“, is a whole other mouthful that nobody uses in full (where else does one find an X-Wing other than Star Wars?).
Below are some of the titles Adams curated and posted on the original BGG thread, but you should also follow the @boardnames Twitter account to get your regular dose of AI-generated game titles.
- Doctor Who: The American Revolution
- Pirates of Gettysburg
- Africana Scrabble Battles
- Star Wars: Star Wars Edition
- Alien Architects
- Rock Happens
- Race to the Reich
- Space Moscow
- Kung Fluxx
- Santa Commander: The Card Game
- Chaos & Canada
- Storm of the Second
- Dungeon Continental Baseball
- Risk: Star Wars – Party Pack (Game)
- Battle for Catan
- Colonial Stories Continue
- Chronicles of Checkers
- Contraction Castle
- General Wars
- Scrabble Commander: The Game of Crimes
- Conquest of the Ancient World: The Battle of Indiana
- Conflict of the Ring
- The Struggle of the Third Edition
- Star Wars: Elves of the Ancient War 1945-1965-1805
- Don’t Pet Your Car!
- Star Wars: Star Wars – Star Wars – Battle Card Game
- King’s End: The Final Varsity Club
- Pandemic: Railways of the Ancients
- Solitaire Liberation: The Base Confrontation
- Captain Bugs
- Monkey Munch
- Angry Whisks
- Frogoon
- Starfack
- Animal With Fire
- Zombie Family
- Ticket to Invite
- Hatting Wars: Warhammer 40,000
- The Game of Digging: Savage Edition
- Battle of Gross
- Bacchogropator
- Street Footbag
- Woe to the Reef
- Star Farmary
- Napoleon and Farming
Which of these titles would you pick up at your FLGS or back on Kickstarter? Tell us in the comments!
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Image Credit: Teri Litorco
Teri Litorco is Geek & Sundry’s contributing editor, author of The Civilized Guide to Tabletop Gaming (a survival and etiquette guide for gamers), and a YouTuber who can be found on social media: Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.