Long story short - contract had Divinity: The Sword of Lies in it. Publisher revised it to Divinity: The Sword of Lies (working title). The day the contract was signed, we were informed the new name was going to be Divine Divinity, courtesy of the CEO who just made tons of cash with Sudden Strike and now figured that any new title needed to have an alliteration in it, or so we were told.
We told them that was a stupid idea. They didn't like us telling them it was a stupid idea and they were also the ones checking our milestones so eventually we had to shut up, especially when inevitably we were late with a particular milestone. End of story, the person who came up with it indeed had poor taste in names and I agree that it probably cost us a lot of sales - most people thought it was a porn game.
I think it's safe to say that publisher wasn't made up of very inspired people. I learnt later that there were only a few people in the company that believed our game had any chance at success, and since they were all experts in their fields (so they told us
), I remember I was feeling very nervous at the time. Never got any word of appreciation for the game we made either. Come to think of it, the only ones who ever showed a sign of appreciation for the end result were Focus, the publisher we're working with for DKS now. That's probably to do with our attitude, but that's another story
