As discussed here people seem to ignore or not care that you can have customizable names and a default name other than John Doe. Having option is awesome, being forced to pick a name or having to read people talk to Mr Doe, breaks immersion. Proposal either just pick something else as default name (a name that exists) or make it a bit more fun. Take a few names and give them at random if the author didn't set one. John, Peter, Frank, Paul, James Smith, Miller, Baker, Cooper, Turner That way while the name would be bland and common they wouldn't be strange to the point of making people give up on stories. Option 3 : scrap John Doe and force authors to choose a default name if they want the custom name option available.
I'll vote for that too, because it doesn't matter if there's a default for me or not, I always change it...
I think the easiest way to do it would be to reset the default names. Most Common Names Male First Name: James Female First Name: Mary Last Name: Smith Though in time this would present the same problem of repetitiveness.
Isn't it a Placeholder for dead people with no identification? I not an English speaker but only saw it used in this context.
yes, but http://www.whitepages.com/name/Doe can't imagine that all of them are fake (and there are probably some parents who think that it would be funny to name their children like that)
I Don't know for Doe but I always seen John Doe as a name for unidentified people. Also it feels weird and it is frikking everywhere on this site.
Adding a default long first name and a secondary nickname might help to make the generic character name seem a little more fleshed out. Such as Sam or Sammie could be for Samuel or Samantha. Be even more interesting if the story knew which default name to use as a default depending on if you pick male or female POV but that might be stretching it a little. Such as Alexander/Alex for male and Alexandria/Alexis for a female POV.
I'm almost leaning toward the advantage of John Doe being its so fucking obnoxious that an author should feel obligated to change it... The problem with simply changing the default name to something more palatable is that those names are specific - I'd feel almost as bothered reading about the same specific name in multiple stories... But, really, in general I'd call on authors to name their character themselves, whether the do the custom name thing or no. Changing the default is okay. John Doe is annoying. But its not the real problem, to me.
I still feel that the best option would be to not have a default at all. If the author wishes to use custom name variables they must chose a default themselves.
The only problem I see with deleting the default name is that you need to replace it with some other variable for new writers as is it gives new writers a sort of idea how the variables work. So you can either change the default name, change the variable to a default female name that would force authors to change it when writing male characters, or change the default variable to something else, not sure what. The only alternative I see to this might be that you can have a link in new story/edit story page to the chyoa guide for this and the game system.
Another possible idea for this might be related to game mode or only able to preform with game mode but what if when you change John Doe for a story it saves it permanently like the game mode saves the game variables. So it be a one time thing so you don't have to change the name every time you visit a story.
