GOTY 2015: Best logo

More like LOTY

As media, we have no business caring about the marketing of video games. In fact, we actually have a professional obligation to parse through it, finding the good information and discarding the bullshit. That’s, like, half the job, really. Those in PR and marketing try hard to tint our views and we try hard to see a game for what it really is. It’s a tug-of-war that gets easier the longer you do this.

For example, that’s why, for as many times as Ubisoft sends out a press release that reads “Watch_Dogs,” we print “Watch Dogs.” Or, we should anyway. It seems innocuous, but that underscore is more than just a dated holdover from 2002 when AOL Instant Messenger names took the form of “sxxxy_thng_69_2000.” It represents Ubisoft’s branding attempts, and you know that because it contributes absolutely nothing else to the name. That underscore isn’t adding extra sounds like the title is suddenly Watch unnnn Dogs.

The thing is, it doesn’t matter to us if Ubisoft’s branding is on-point. It’s not our job to make sure you know that the underscore is totally there indicating that it’s a totally hip and with-it game. It’s the same way that if we wrote about sports, it wouldn’t be our obligation to call the San Francisco Giants’ stadium AT&T Park. We could call it any number of names, but unless AT&T’s footing our cell phone bills every month, it’s not our place to strengthen its brand.

Immutable as I am in that belief, one game this year had the most brilliant logo that I’ve seen in a long time. Maybe ever, honestly. Gross as it is to shine a light on these marketing efforts, it’s an easier pill to swallow given that the logo might be the best thing about this game.

Pat yourself on the back, 2K marketing team; Evolve had the best logo of 2015.

At first glance, Evolve‘s logo is nothing to write home about. It’s minimalistic in its presentation, nothing more than some squares, rectangles, and a modest font. Actually, if you didn’t know anything about the game, it’d be easy to mistake it as a really dull and uninspired look. At least Fallout 4 sprung for a lightning bolt in the “o.”

So, let’s get just a little backstory on Evolve. It’s a four-versus-one asymmetric multiplayer game. A team of four players takes on one giant monster. That’s what’s happening in the logo — four letters in small squares are pitted against the final “e” in Evolve, a letter that gets a rectangle as long as the first four boxes combined. That rogue “v” represents a legal system-style “versus,” as if this should be the way all court cases are determined.

It’s tough to remember a video game logo that’s so on-the-nose, yet so clever about it too. Usually, understatedness is left wanting. Dead Island has a palm tree so you know there’s an island, Rage has an anarchy sign so you know that there’s anarchy, and Sonic Boom boomed so hard that it cracked all the letters. These are not examples of good logos.

Even though it’s almost 2016, so many game logos are stuck in 1996. They are hellbent on having attitude (or, ‘tude as the designers might say). It’s why so many gleam of gun-metal gray or have electricity shooting from the letters. Whatever it takes to let you know that This Is One Of The Cool Video Games. It’s the equivalent of box art with a man toting a gun slung over his shoulder looking slightly away from the camera.

Evolve skirts that and it does everything right (well, as far as its logo is concerned, anyway). Instead, it’s simple and elegant and functional and restrained. More simply put: Evolve‘s logo was not dumb while most other logos were very dumb. 

It’s not like the competition was any good, but Evolve ran away with the best logo of 2015. In a wasteland of bad video game logos, 2K and Turtle Rock created one worth looking at and one worth thinking about. The game’s legacy probably won’t last a whole lot longer, but hopefully its logo’s legacy lasts for years to come.