What's In A Name?

As September is upon us again, it is nearly time for what has become something of an annual event; RailSimulator.com's latest instalment of Railworks. Except this year, it isn't.
From September 20 2012 users will automatically receive a free upgrade to Train Simulator 2013 when they log in to Steam.
As usual, there are a host of new features and improvements coming our way (I'm not going in to detail over these here, they can be found at http://www.railsimulator.com/newsdetail.php?Ref=428), but there is, to me at least, one glaring omission; no mention whatsoever of the word "Railworks".
Now, this isn't me ranting about RailSimulator.com continuing to evolve the program; over the last 2-3 years this has brought us some massive leaps forward in the realism stakes, such as interactive road traffic at level crossings, variable ride quality, superelevated curves and improved ambient lighting to name but a few.
However, one of the things that led me to pick up Railworks over any of the other railway simulators out there was the name. Railworks as a name is just brimming with potential and reflects the vast possibilities within the program itself. You can drive pretty much any type of rail traffic imaginable from many regions of Europe and America; create your own timetables, missions or scenarios or one of the many high quality routes available for the program; you can create your own route or railway within the vast, open world editor; you can build 3D models in other programs such as Blender to place in, decorate and customise your routes.
On the other hand, the alternatives are all rather lacking in the naming department. Trainz sounds rather frivolous with that somewhat juvenile "z" appended to it. BVE offers no indication that it is a rail simulator. And (significantly) Microsoft's Train Simulator sounds rather po-faced and serious (and, dare I say it, just a little dull).
Yet RailSimulator.com have chosen to adopt the Train Simulator moniker for their program, evolving from Railworks to Railworks 2: Train Simulator to Train Simulator 2012: Railworks 3 to this years forthcoming Train Simulator 2013.
I'm sure there are sound commercial reasons for adopting this change of name. As mentioned above, it is important that the name of the program gives a strong indication of the content, especially for newcomers to the genre who have limited foreknowledge of the programs that are available. Train Simulator is undoubtedly a "Ronseal" name; it does exactly what it says on the box and that can only be a good thing in terms of attracting new users to the program and for the commercial success of RailSimulator.com.
But I can't help but feeling that Railworks is a far more evocative and fun name for the program, and one that does convey to the potential buyer the core gist of the game while also hinting at the huge possibilities for more creative use contained in the program.

Steve