What's In A Name: WayForward Technologies

by Justin McElroy { Sep 21st 2009 at 12:19PM }

With its gorgeous A Boy and His Blob remake in the pipeline, WayForward has been on our minds quite a lot recently. Unfortunately, we didn't have the answer to the real question: How did the company come up with its name? Our curiosity is now sated.

"Back when we started in 1990, I happened to be reading a Douglas Adams book called Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. One of the lead characters in it is Gordon Way, who not only shares my surname, but also developed MIDI software for Windows, which happened to be a hobby of mine at the time. I decided to name my company after his partly as a tribute to my favorite author and partly because it was too weird a coincidence to pass up.

"Five years later, the parallels continued when we were acquired by a company that subsequently spun us off. We effectively started over from scratch. Gordon Way's company was actually called WayForward Technologies II for similar reasons.

"Honestly, I'm hoping the similarities end there, because Gordon Way ends up getting murdered."

–Voldi Way, founder of WayForward

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Tags: a-boy-and-his-blob, wayforward, whats-in-a-name

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

eugaet @ Sep 21st 2009 12:48PM

OK, now I have to read that book again. It's been too long.

Courtney @ Sep 21st 2009 12:57PM

That's fantastic, and is now my favorite story for naming of video game companies (as the big poker tournament was a lie). And I also need to dig out my copy of that and read it.

Also, this is the second one of these features to mention getting a name from a book. Stardock was the same way.

MowDownJoe @ Sep 21st 2009 1:15PM

Some people may call blasphemy for me on this, but I enjoyed Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency better than the Hitchhiker books.

ComicShaman @ Sep 21st 2009 1:19PM

My question is if they have an Electric Monk working for them.

Wardo @ Sep 21st 2009 1:19PM

I'm still saddened by the fact that Gearbox's story was a lie. This one is pretty awesome though, hopefully it's true this time.

Kyammi @ Sep 21st 2009 3:01PM

WOW, talk about scary coincidences. I've been rereading the book a lot recently, I think it's Douglas Adams' best. Anyways, I also was aware of the videogame company WayForward and as recently as LAST NIGHT I was wondering if that's where they got their company name from.