in ,

New Game Maker Logo Revealed

Game Maker 8 Logo

This is the new logo that will be used to represent Game Maker and has earned its creator, 15 year old Albert Zak, the $250 cash prize.

The logo was selected by Game Maker creator Mark Overmars and YoYo Games CEO Sandy Duncan from more than 500 which were submitted by Game Maker users.  In a poll we hosted asking Game Maker users to choose between 4 of the finalists just 8% of the 552 voters picked this as their favourite logo.

History of the Game Maker logo:

Icon used since Game Maker 6:
game-maker-logo-pre-version-5

Logo used since Game Maker 5:
Game Maker Logo used for versions 5-7

Game Maker 5 icon:

game-maker-5-icon

Game Maker 4 icon:

Game Maker 4 icon

Game Maker 1.1 – 3 icon:

Game Maker 2 and 3

What do you think?

83 Comments

Leave a Reply
  1. YoyoGames was dead to me the moment it posted the announcement about the logo.
    I didn’t even hear that they had changed it again for ages.
    I might have handled it, if not for the new PNG stuff.
    I mean, it was good, but Game Maker had ALWAYS only used gifs, and it had ALWAYS had a hammer logo.
    The old interface was much nicer- you could erase just by right-clicking.
    I also miss the transparent green.
    I mean, you can edit the background colour but.
    The corner thing was kinda awkward, but I. DO. NOT. COPE. WELL. WITH. CHANGE.
    So shut up.

  2. @niksha

    You are like one of the few people I agree with. Who cares? (Well I guess a lot of people do, but they shouldn’t XD)

  3. wow i was wondering what all the fuss was about the logo but damn i kind of understand now… Not a fan of the new logo… It doesnt really interest me all too much as the tool itself is what is important to me but as stupid as it sounds every time i open up G 8 its going to piss me off…

  4. Nice design but it feels too yahoo though, that’s my only comment on it. And I agreed adding in the hammer will make it more distinct & keep some of it’s original element. Cheers!

  5. The logo attempts to be more complicated than the original GM logo, but in doing so it has a lot more faults. Changing to this logo, as indicated by most of the above users, would cause a major shift in the idealized audience of the GM software – by about 10 years.

  6. Tom Russell :But come to think of it, if the logo was just designed by marketeers and released without any community involvement, there would still be the same amount of bile and anger, I think. So maybe it wasn’t quite so avoidable after all?

    Certainly, there would be an explosion of vitriol staright after the decision, but it wouldn’t be as intesnse, nor would it have as long of a tail as this one has. There’d be no illusion of ownership, so people would be angry, but they’d accept there’s nothing they can do about it. What we are seeing now though is after a certain point the hate begins to sustain itself; people see the big, 600 post monster threads, people think “wow, we are loud. They HAVE to hear us now!*RAWR*”

  7. All this brouhaha over logo is hilarious.

    Personally, I don’t care what the logo looks like. What I am concerned with is the tool and promised functionality in Mac and Windows.. among other things.

    At the moment I am using GM7 Pro for the game I am working on. GM8 will be a instant upgrade mostly because of the new PNG capabilities in the editor. Commercial developers using GM don’t care what the logo looks like in the end. It’s all under-aged audience in the forum (and other places) that is in rage over someone else getting the press and hype instead of them themselves (in other words: jealousy, cute). You can see the same response when commercial game developers post the news about their games in the forums. Immature responses like “why is this game not free?” or “this isn’t worthy of being a commercial game cause it is made in GM” are almost always found here and there.

    My advice? If you are interested in making a commercial game anyway, don’t mix with the GM community. Keep your distance, learn what you want and ignore everything else. A cutesy logo isn’t going to kill your reputation in the gaming industry because majority of your customers out there will never know what tool you used or even care about learning how their games are made.

  8. That logo just seems to say “look at me being a cute logo and all, don’t I seem easy and fun, you could actually make GOW III with me, without even writing a line of code”. And then, of course, thousands of li’l kids will start buying it and get disappointed like shit, because you can’t even make Quake III with it, well, maybe if you’re really, really good at it (but that takes some years). And then they’ll make 12 shit games, throw them on YYG, get disappointed by all the “better” GM trolls, and then go away.
    In the meantime every existing user will boycot GM8, and start hating YYG. After a while YYG will remove support for adding new GM7 games and then half of the ppl will get the new GM8 crack, about three of them will buy it and feel bad for wasting money, and the rest will abandon GM altogether.

    I think I’ll stop using GM and go on. Maybe use Construct, they say it’s better. I suddenly understand why all those GM alternatives topics are so popular.

    Or YYG will just get their head out of their ass and start making a decent logo themselves.

    Oh, and I think the answer to SonicWorms’ question is: Yes, must’ve been. Let’s just hope they aren’t all cracky’s and cockeheads there at YYG.

  9. Matthew, my implication isn’t that freeware gamers look for kiddie stuff– it’s that the people who are turned off by “kiddie stuff” are likely the same people who are turned off by the features of most freeware games– the pixelated graphics, etc. And people who are discouraged by a logo, again, would likely lack the maturity and intelligence to contribute something of value.

  10. Nice to see some intelligent discussion on the issue rather than the whining going on in the forum and the glog.

    My largest complaint was that I now realize the market YoYo is aiming for. 8-12 year old kids (Maybe even 6-12). I won’t quit using the software like the crazies are suggesting. It’s good software, regardless of where the owners are marketing it. I don’t see how they can hope to build the YoYoGames website while marketing their tool to attract kids. All of their best game designers are the older ones. (16 and up for the most part)
    While I understand that simply changing the logo won’t make the current power users leave. It could slow down the adoption of the software by other good game developers. I feel that as a company, it was a strange and not very clearly thought out move.

    It also maddens me the way Sandy was treating it. I understand that he has to deal with a lot of crazies, but coming back with comments like “change is a hard thing for some poeple” when in a matter of minutes he had 40 comments all complaining about the logo. Seems as though he was simply brushing the community off, even when he had a number of intelligent posts saying why they didn’t like it. He ignored any points that those users made.
    On several occasions he simply treat the whole thing like a big joke, just mocking the old logo as though that justifies choosing this one.
    “having nightmares of a logo with a hammer in it !!” – Sandy (Post 134 glog)
    Seems a little childish to me. I guess I expected the company to act a little more professional, in both logo choice and handling the blowup afterwords. But like I said, I think their target market is now young kids.

    Overall, disappointed.
    -Elmernite

  11. Tom Russell :people who are discouraged by a logo, again, would likely lack the maturity and intelligence to contribute something of value.

    Look, I do agree that people have to be mature about things, but honestly, if you were to come across a program with that as the logo, not knowing anything about it before hand, would you download that or something like construct?

    I agree with what Elmernite is saying. I think that YYG, although I’m somewhat against advertising for a specific demographic, I think that they should lean more towards the tween-teen and early adult. That is where the good games are usually to be made. Game Maker is a awesome tool, with a lot of power (in 2d games anyway), but I don’t agree with marketing something like this for kids-tweens is a good idea.
    They may make some alright games, we may get another 2Dcube even, but the odds of that greatly diminish with the age that follows the user, I believe.

    I think that the logo looks good, I just don’t think that it belongs with GM.
    As I posted before, I think that if they where to replace the logo, it should be something like this: http://indy.idhost.kz/logo/2.jpg

    Game Maker is recognized all though out the world, via it’s hammer logo, why do we need to change this? It will only confuse people, maybe get them to think it’s the wrong tool they’re downloading. I never agreed to this change. Revamping the logo, sure, but changing it completely? No. It would require a huge amount of marketing…
    YYG just spend $250 though, they can still change it, but I highly doubt they will.

11 Pings & Trackbacks

  1. Pingback:

  2. Pingback:

  3. Pingback:

  4. Pingback:

  5. Pingback:GMVision.tv » Blog Archive » GMLive: Discussion Topics (12-5)

  6. Pingback:

  7. Pingback:

  8. Pingback:

  9. Pingback:

  10. Pingback:

  11. Pingback:GMVision.tv » Blog Archive » Petition against the new GM Logo!

Leave a Reply to Pat Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Mid-week Community Links

Interview with Game Maker 8 Logo Creator