Greek Letters in video games

[Chip]

So lately I noticed that a lot of video games have greek letters associated with it. A few examples are the lowercase λ (lambda) in Half-Life, epsilon in GTA (although it is not written as the greek letter. it is like an E mixed with a P) and the Ω (omega) in God of War (although that one makes sense). but I don't understand the importance of the greek letters (never played half-life so it might have something to do with the game) but it wasn't only these games that have greek letters. There are also games that have other letters from other languages (q in quake). does anybody understand the point of these letters in games, or is it because they look cool? 

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

With Half-Life it was because the place it was set in was "Lambda Complex".  Much like Doom 3 had "Delta Labs" and whatever.  It's a more techie sounding formula than saying Lab A, Lab B or Lab 1, Lab 2 etc. but serves the same purpose.

[Dark Pulse]

All I know is that Xan Kriegor is the alpha and the omega.

[Jello]

With Half-Life it makes perfect sense, since it's a scientific research facility. Much like using the NATO phonetic alphabet when communicating information. Because a single letter can be perceived, read, or heard differently by people who use different languages, or can be garbled during transmission, using an entire word can provide clarity. Good example is m and n. Over a radio, they sound very similar. But if you use Mike and November, they're easily distinguished. Charlie and Tango instead of c and t. So in Half-Life, it would make sense that they would use Greek letters for the names of the different labs and sectors to automatically distinguish them from other labs without any doubt as to which lab it was. "Oh... I thought they said it was in N lab". "Nope, sorry, you want M lab". 

 

With Quake... they made a Q by using a nine inch nail. That one's pretty self explanatory. 

[printz]

13 hours ago, ETTiNGRiNDER said:

With Half-Life it was because the place it was set in was "Lambda Complex".  Much like Doom 3 had "Delta Labs" and whatever.  It's a more techie sounding formula than saying Lab A, Lab B or Lab 1, Lab 2 etc. but serves the same purpose.

Aren't the Alpha and Delta Labs rather named after the NATO alphabet?

[Maximum Matt]

Remember that platformer Gods? Didn't that have greek letters and stuff 

[Gez]

15 hours ago, LiT_gam3r said:

never played half-life so it might have something to do with the game

Do you know what Half-Life is named after? It's a science term. It's a measure of the time that it takes for a heavy element to decay into a lighter element. Specifically, it measures the time in which half of the starting quantity of that element will have decayed. (It doesn't matter how much of it you have at the start.) It's an exponential phenomenon, not a constant effect, so in two half-lives, you don't lose all of the element (one half + another half) but three quarters of it (one half + one half of the remaining half), and likewise you'll lose 7/8th with three half-lives, and so on.

 

It turns out that exponential decay is based on a decay constant, which in science papers is customarily noted with a lambda (λ).

 

2 hours ago, printz said:

Aren't the Alpha and Delta Labs rather named after the NATO alphabet?

Why would they use the NATO alphabet? Despite having a lot of Marines around, the people working in the labs are not military. Also there's an Exis lab, and that's neither a Greek letter nor in NATO alphabet.

[jval]

16 hours ago, LiT_gam3r said:

There are also games that have other letters from other languages (q in quake).

 

Maybe it's not cue, but koppa (a letter used in the early form of Greek Alphabet).

[printz]

Before I realized the Quake logo is just a stylized Q, I thought it's just an abstract goat sign. Still, I find that chipped Q pretty unique and original. I wonder if Sandy Petersen had a hand in designing it. 

[MrFlibble]

Things get messy when people try stylising Latin script by replacing letters with similar-looking Greek uppercase letters, without realising that they signify completely different sounds.

 

The most outrageous examples include uppercase sigma Σ used instead of E (hey, it looks kinda similar, no? the sound is /s/ actually), and uppercase theta Θ (/th/) instead f O.

 

There's a really nice Ancient Greece themed platform game called Apotheon (with a visual style inspired by Greek vase paintings), but the first trailer made me laugh because the devs blundered big time with Greek letters at the end of the trailer. Yeah it says (transliterated back into Latin script) LROTIEOP. Thankfully they dropped this idea for the final release.

[Chip]

 

 

 

 

3 minutes ago, MrFlibble said:

LROTIEOP. 

Θατ'ς Φυννη

[Gez]

11 minutes ago, MrFlibble said:

Things get messy when people try stylising Latin script by replacing letters with similar-looking Greek uppercase letters, without realising that they signify completely different sounds.

Cyrillic has the same problem.

 

But what's the better option, go with HλLF-LIFE and have something that's legible by most people, and it's just that the A is styled like a lambda; or go with the perhaps more accurate HALF-λIFE and get people to read it as "HALF-AIFE"?

[cambreaKer]

6 hours ago, Gez said:

three half-lives

insert generic le funny half life 3 joke here

[Tetzlaff]

There are quite a few games that use a greek letter in their title.

 

Alpha Black Zero: Intrepid Protocol (2004)
Alpha Decay (2016)
Alpha Locus VR (2017)
Alpha Mike Foxtrot VR (2017)
Alpha Prime (2006)
Alpha Protocol: The Espionage RPG (2010)
Alpha Storm (1997)

 

Gamma Blast (2018)
Gamma Bros. (2006)
Gamma Wing (1991)

 

Delta Force (1998)
Delta Force 2 (1999)
Delta Force 3: Land Warrior (2000)
Delta Force 4: Black Hawk Down (2003)
Delta Force Black Hawk Down: Team Sabre (2004)
Delta Force Xtreme (2005)
Delta Force: Operation Fire Shield (2012)
Delta Force: Task Force Dagger (2002)
Delta Force: Xtreme 2 (2009)
Delta G (2019)
Delta Horizon (2018)
Delta V (1994)

 

Epsilon (2015)

Epsilon Corp. (2016)

 

Sigma Theory: Global Cold War (2019)

 

Found no game using "Beta" in their title, probably because beta evokes "unfinished".

[MrFlibble]

On 5/14/2020 at 8:18 PM, Gez said:

Cyrillic has the same problem.

Well, that's ШЗДЯ for sure!

 

Back to the Greek letters, don't forget the Confederate squadrons in StarCraft, named after Greek letters. IIRC the respective letters themselves never appear in-game but are in the manual, and I think that in StarCraft: Mass Recall the squadrons that do appear in the campaign, like the Alpha Squadron, have decals with the appropriate letters. UPD: Yup, you can see the Omega Squadron's Omega logo right here (as a terrain texture, even).

[Chip]

8 minutes ago, MrFlibble said:

Well, that's ШЗДЯ for sure!

SHYZDYA?

[MrFlibble]

Uh-huh (that's the Wikipedia example of Faux Cyrillic I wasn't aware of :))

[Dark Pulse]

This is nothing new. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Hollywood's latest star...

...Lyaiold Schwlyazeieggeya.

 

See here for a lot more. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheBackwardsR