"Apoapsis" is not really a bad name, it's just really difficult to pronounce. It becomes even more difficult to pronounce when you put another word starting with 's' after it, such as "studios". So what is an apoapsis then? It's an astronomy term which defines the point at which an orbiting object is farthest away from the center of mass of the body it's orbiting. We understand that such a description may not immediately convey an understanding, except perhaps for those who are qualified astronomers, but thankfully our logo has always made a point out of recognizing the apoapsis: It's the lonely red dot out on the edge of the orbit. We only know of this term because of the hundreds of hours we've spent playing Kerbal Space Program, a game about building rockets and failing miserably launching them, along with the general space interest that runs within the lab. With the definition of an apoapsis in mind there are also a few nice parables one can draw between crafting games and being on the utmost point of an orbit... but we’ll leave those for your imagination. An apoapsis is a really nice thing, it’s just also really difficult to pronounce.
Well, what is an "apog" (ˈeɪˈpɑg) then? You could argue that its sort of a really short way of saying "apogee"... but then what is an apogee? It's complex, but put very simply its similar to an apoapsis but specifically for Earth - more importantly it would be the perfect word for someone like us to transition to unless… this word had not already been claimed by multiple different organizations out there. Shorten apogee and you get... Apog! It's a fun word to say and we want to preserve the origin story and soul of our little organization and this is the best way to do it. In the process, we’re also dropping “studios” in favor of “labs” because we’re fans of scientific rigor and peer-reviewed reports. Building our first game, Airport CEO, we felt very much like junior scientists researching, testing and exploring our way through Airport CEO rather than a studio who knew exactly what they were doing.
But why even bother changing your name as a game developer, some may ask, when it's the names of the games that really matter? Well... its now or never.
Good bye Apoapsis Studios. Hello Apog Labs!
// Apog Labs
