A request from Kristin regarding Rabbits...

[Kristin Looney]

My husband (Andrew Looney) and I have been making games together for more than two decades... and we have been promoting them at conventions and online since the very early days of the internet. Over 10 years ago (on Nov 25th 1999 to be precise) we launched our first formalized fan club which we called The Mad Lab Rabbits. Over the next seven years more than 4000 fans joined this fan program, and I've often said it was one of the most amazing things we ever created. The one thing that was not amazing however was the software we were using to run the program, and as we dug in to fix our overall software systems, we made the hard decision to suspend the program (on June 28th 2007).

Last year (on May 18th 2010) we started making plans to launch a new fan club, and one of the other very hard decisions we made was to change the name. 

Why the change? To begin with, it must be understood that we make games for adults. Most of our games can be played by children, but we design them to be fun and challenging for grownups. Unfortunately, what people think of when they see our old Mad Lab Rabbit imagery is "stuff for kids," and it can be very difficult to get past that first impression. If I had a time machine, I would go back and tell myself this when we were first deciding on a name back in 1999.  I *LOVE* the tagline "Our mission is to multiply" - and that still is the mission of our fan club...  but as much as I also *LOVE* calling our fans Rabbits, this just isn't a good brand name for us. It just leads to confusion and misunderstanding, so we have dropped the name. 

If you are one of those 4000 fans who have long called yourself a Rabbit, please understand how hard it is for me to ask this, but please help us with this rebranding and drop the name Rabbit from the conversation.  Trust me, I know how hard this is. 

In particular - please don't call yourself a Rabbit on your profile page. Long time fan... fan since the old days... there are lots of ways to say you've been a fan forever without calling yourself a Rabbit.  A random reference to being a Rabbit is just confusing to new members who don't know about the old program, and this just keeps this conversation going. I know how hard this change is for so many of you - please know how much I appreciate your efforts to help us make this change. 

Thank you for joining our fan club and for helping us promote our games!

[Antoine Richard]

Understand...so i'm now the starship captain of a bunch of r_____S !

[Daniel R. Nelon]

Sure thing.

[Kristin Looney]

Thank you, Daniel - and I love the new name you chose for your awesome pyramid event report!  Check it out everyone if you have not seen this: A Beginner's Guide To Pyramids

[Tex Albritton]

This from a company (that I love for Martian Chess and other pyramid-requiring games BTW) that produces games about zombies, pirates, and Monty Python?  The slack-jaws who demonstrate their two-digit nature by slagging the games, because of the Lab Rabbit concept, wouldn't be interested in playing them anyway (unless you had sports figures pimping the games.)

 

If new members get confused, then they haven't done their homework.  They will have to learn, just like the rest of us.

 

Sorry Luv, but once a Rabbit, ALWAYS a Rabbit.

Tex

(“The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play.” -- James T. Kirk)

[Becca Stallings]

Could you please remind us what the term IS now?  Maybe it's just me, but I find it really difficult to remember what you changed it to, and I have a feeling you changed it more than once in a short time.  I remember Starship Captains have to have particular pyramid cred, but what are the general volunteers called now?

I can use the new term here.  What about my half-dozen articles on my site (there are another at least 4 on your site, which I can't edit) written during the Rabbit era--do you want me to put in some kind of explanation, or is it okay for historical purposes?

[Dave Autzen]

I think we're lab technicians now?

 

[Kristin Looney]

No need to stress too much about your old articles - we don't need/want to change history,  the old Rabbit program was awesome and it will be herald in story and song - we are just asking you guys not to use the old name going forward, so we can succeed at changing the name.   And yeah, calling yourself a Looney Labs Game Technician isn't quite as catchy as calling yourself a Mad Lab Rabbit was, and it's hard to just substitute Game Tech for Rabbit, but it does work well.  And over time, as our no longer tiny but still very small company has the time/cash to actually create a new logo and web site and other branding we have planned - then it will become easier to figure out what the new name actually is!  Thank you for joining our new fan club, 'Becca - and I look forward to playing games with you in Ohio in June!

[Mike Peterson]

Is there a way to sticky this on the front page of the forums? I wouldn't have seen this if I hadn't been idly exploring the ning sub-forum.