Why did Wet dev A2M change its name?

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 10 November, 2010

"Sometimes, it becomes not funny."

It's easy to see the funny side of Wet developer Behaviour's recent name change.

A quick google search of A2M, the acronym of the studio formally known as Artificial Mind & Movement, reveals why.

But for the independent Montreal developer's CEO Rémi Racine, it stopped being funny around 2008.

"It was part of the decision," Racine told Eurogamer. "People didn't remember Artificial Mind & Movement, and there was that issue also.

"That issue became known to us five years ago. It was mentioned in a movie and it started to grow from 2005/2006."

What movie? Clerks II?

"Before that, we never heard that," Racine revealed. "For us it started to become an issue in 2008. We decided to change the name a year later, in 2009, and it took us a year to finalise the process.

"At first it was funny, and we didn't mind. Locally, it's funny. Not on the international scene, but locally, some people have fun with it.

"As much as it was funny, sometimes it becomes not funny."

Still, the acronym A2M "never" put off publishers from hiring the studio for development duties.

Indeed Wet and Naughty Bear are just two of the long list of games the studio's created.

"We had to explain sometimes to publishers what the acronym meant," Racine said.

"Our logo was on a children's title. Nobody had a problem with that. As much as they're happy for us that we're changing, it was never an issue."

Behaviour announced this week that it's hard at work on sequels to both Wet and Naughty Bear.

Racine refused to comment on either games, or discuss potential publishers, but he did promise improvements over their predecessors.

Buried within Behaviour's name change press release is a mention that it's working on games for next-generation handhelds. Does that mean the heavily rumoured PSP2?

"I'm working on a next-generation portable platform," quipped Racine. "That's the only thing I can say. The press release says it all."

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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