(This is an archived old post from the previous version of the page.)
Naming a studio is not supposed to be a simple thing. So many factors at play. Does it sound great? Does it sell the right message? Is it easy to find in Google? But in the case of The Astronauts, we all agreed on the name in about five seconds. And here are five reasons why.
5. STAR SAILORS
Literally, “astronaut” means “star sailor”. The word is derived from the Greek words for star (astro) and sailor (naut). All right, fine, we only learned that after we named the studio, but it was a very pleasant surprise to discover such romantic roots of the word.
4. CHILDHOOD DREAMS
Some little boys want to be astronauts when they grow up. Of course they don’t really mean learning math and physics or taking heavy doses of Extravehicular Activity training, they just want to travel to faraway planets and discover unknown worlds. We never stopped wanting that.
3. STANISLAW LEM
We’re located in Warsaw, Poland. Stanislaw Lem is the most famous Polish science-fiction writer, and guess what, his first book in the genre was called The Astronauts. To be honest, the book is not that great (read the incredible The Cyberiad instead), but it had a really cool message that reason eventually would overcome political madness.
2. TO THE MOON
Below we have one of the most famous photographs in the world. In 1969, the astronaut Neil Armstrong put his left foot on the Moon. It was the first human footprint on the extraterrestrial world (and no, we don’t want to admit that it’s not an image of that particular footprint). If that was not awesome enough, realize that this footprint will be there for a million years. There is no wind to blow it away.
1. INTO THE UNKNOWN
Real and imaginary astronauts boldly go where no man has gone before. With our games, we want to invite gamers on a journey they will not soon forget, into worlds they have not seen before. We don’t aspire to be the edgiest, craziest gamedev team out there. But we hope – hope! – that we can put our own footprint on the crust of this beautiful, amazing world of games.
And that is why we decided to call ourselves The Astronauts.
