I really didn’t want to do this. But I’m forced to agree that it’s a Good Idea.

I was positively gleeful when I got this domain.  I knew as soon as I started really writing games that I wanted to use this domain as my ‘Gaming Face’ as it were.  I was always a little bothered that I only had the .net domain, as two other people had the .org and the .com domains, and having just the .net domain is a little like winning Most Mobile Patient In The Leg Burn Ward.

But, domains are what you make of them, and in the end most people are just following links anyway.  So I was determined to make a run of it.  When I saw the .org domain was expiring, I contacted the previous owner and they said they were done with it and were happy to transfer it to someone who would put the domain to use.

When I looked at doing the same thing for the .com domain, I asked a friend if he thought it was worth pursuing, and he raised a very valid point: That while the alignments (including Chaotic Neutral) had been released under the OGL, and while WotC probably couldn’t legally keep me from using the term as the name for a business, and while they probably would not actually win a court battle, what they COULD do is make me prove it.  And that would easily cost me more money than I would ever hope to make from a game.  WotC would probably not care at all if it was just some website where I talked about games. When I start selling games as “Chaotic Neutral” they may decide they care.

Let’s be honest for a minute – I should be so lucky as to be even recognized by WotC as anything at all.  If I were ever to sell enough games as to even be a tiny blip on their enormous radar, I would be successful beyond imagination.  And the odds of this, if I am realistic, are somewhere between Seeing A Human Spontaneously Combust and Waking Up Covered In GOOOOOOOOOOOOLD.

But.

At this stage, when I haven’t really released much other than a demo, and when I’m ramping up to build and write and do all sorts of things, does it makes sense to just change the course now, before I lay all the track, and avoid a situation where even if I managed to win, I would lose?

Yes.  Unquestionably, it makes sense.

So, I got a new set of domains.  I’ll be hanging on to this domain (for one thing, I need it to redirect to the new site for a while). But new domains means new setup, means I need to change at least the logo, and if I’m changing the logo then I may as well just change the whole dang theme.  Which is a shame, because I bloody loved this one.

Maybe I’ll keep it mostly the same, but that just feels cheap to me.  So I’ll probably be making a more drastic change, within the next week or so.  Once it’s done, we’ll have a party.