Irrational Games Interview

The company’s decision to change its name back to “Irrational Games” seems to be a popular topic, as IGN is next in line to publish an interview with Ken Levine about the circumstances around the decision, the origin of the name itself, and more.

IGN: Let’s talk about the name. After you guys left Looking Glass, who decided that the new company should be called Irrational? What was the origin of the name?

Ken Levine: I think of all the things we ever did — raising money, hiring people — naming the company is one of the hardest thing to do. It sticks with you forever. Well, almost forever. Or it doesn’t seem to be forever but then it comes back. For a long time. We kicked around a lot of names.

[Co-founder] Jon [Chey] and I were playing this hex-based wargame. I can’t remember the name of it but it was one of those really hardcore World War 2, man-to-man combat, hex-based games…

IGN: Like Squad Leader?

Ken Levine: Right, but it made Squad Leader look like Monopoly.

There was a table in that game. They didn’t just have a horse-to-horse combat table. They had an underwater horse-to-horse combat table. So we were almost Underwater Horse for a while because we thought it was the extreme of nerdom to have an underwater horse-to-horse combat table. But we thought that was a mouthful so we went with Irrational, which was sort of a compromise.