Joystiq’s Alexander Sliwinski has once again raised the question of who in the hell American McGee thinks he is slapping his name on things. He has some nerve presenting stuff. McGee sees his name as a branding action (like Mark Ecko’s graffiti game) and hopes that his name will come to represent a certain something.

The question over whether Mr. Mcgee has “earned” the right to have his name on a game box is a little silly. It only really works if players ascribe meaning to the name, and sticking it on titles as wildly different as Alice, Scrapland and Bad Day in LA might not work as branding in any manner.

Designers don’t get their names on boxes very often. Sid Meier’s name was first attached to Pirates! because there was a hope that people who recognized the name from his flight sims could be drawn to the new product. It’s not like he had made a name for himself in cartoony action games before. So the name which has become so ubiquitous as branding began as little more than an effort to move an already established Microprose name to another field.

Games are more likely to have “from the maker of” or “from the people behind” than they are to have an actual name attached. Wargames will still use a specific name to push some products. Norm Koger’s name on Distant Guns will draw afficianadoes immediately, and John Tiller’s moniker has become so associated with HPS Simulations that the name is almost superfluous. But as game development teams explode in size and production becomes as important as design and programming, the day of the brand name rock star designer may already be past recovery.

It is odd that EA’s early efforts to make stars of its developers never achieved wide success. Movies and television have become auteur entertainment, though they are certainly as collective as game development is. When Meier’s name started being stuck in front of games he worked on, Will Wright and Dani Bunten were superstars in their own right – Wright still is. Rise of Legends is a Brian Reynold’s joint, and he has his name in small print on the game box. But the ownership of franchises, development contracts and ideas has made the marketing of names like Al Lowe, Tim Schaefer, Phil Steinmeyer, etc. something that only real nerds like me are interested in.

And why should I be interested? Mostly because, to my shame I suppose, I find game developers genuinely interesting people. Even people who have done games that I have panned are full of interesting ideas and are energetic in their desire to make quality entertainment for fifty bucks or less. That so few people would recognize the names behind Rome: Total War or Neverwinter Nights or other games that have consumed my household for the past three years is a tiny insult to their work, an even larger insult than not bothering to read the byline above that 3/5 review you scan in your favorite gaming magazine. But I digress.

And it doesn’t have to be a single name. As I’ve said before, game development require bigger teams than it ever has before. And no one is expected to recognize a name before anything has ever been done. But a track record should follow a designer with more than “from the guy who brought you Barbie Goes to Mars“. Recognize teams. Recognize developers by name.

Even if publishers are reluctant to do it, we in the blogodrome can do our best to acknowledge a body of work.