I don't see why Bamco would put this in there, knowing that people will find it, if in fact the names are symbolical for their respective characters. It's practically spoiling it all.
And because of that, you think it would be silly to assume the codenames share any relation to the actual character? Like for example "Stone" = Rock? We should assume they would be smart enough not to make it so obvious?
I don't know. If they were asked to use codenames, I think it would be really naive of them to make codenames which matched the characters. Unless they agreed to actually make small hints or riddles out of the codenames (I could see Okubo being okay with that since he's teased characters in the past), but yeah, I'm not sure.
I think by far the most probable explanation for this is that they are meant to be obvious. I don't think there's much of a realistic chance that those entries got left in there by mistake, but the explanation everyone seems to leap to (Namco is trying to confuse us as to their plans) just does not hold water. At the time that Amy and Cass were discovered, I proposed that this
could have just been a clever little bit of viral marketing; drop the references into the code, knowing someone will see them, and let the "leak" be discovered by more code-savvy fans, who then share it on forums frequented by more hardcore players--and let the story disperse from there. Fans debating the reliability of this information is essentially free and self-sustaining marketing--it costs Namco absolutely nothing, and yet saturates the game's community from the more dedicated players on down. It makes a lot of sense.
Now, it's just as possible that the those first two references are exactly what they appear to be--someone erred in dropping them into the 1.10 patch prematurely and they were discovered quite outside of Namco's intentions. But
no way did that happen a second time by accident, two patches in a row. We know the dev team definitely knew that the first two references were caught (whether that was the plan or not), so these six being here can only possibly be by design and in the expectation of their also being noticed. And the fact that they are codenamed highly suggests that these ones definetly are here to generate buzz. Think about it, having these names in as
values that are going to have to be changed before they are actually ever used by any version of the game makes zero sense in programming terms; those values will have to eventually be altered to reflect the character they actually represent, just like every other such reference in the code for current characters. Dropping them in before that point (let alone numerous patches (and probably up to a year) before those values will have any functional use in the game code serves zero practical purpose.
The only explanation that fits is that Namco wants them to be seen--wants us to be aware of future plans, but has chosen to go this route as opposed to an early announcement. There are three reasons why they may want to pursue such a course: 1) as mentioned before, it's cheap for them, requiring exactly zero art assets, ad buys or marketplace resources, 2) Not being an official announcement, they won't face as severe a backlash if they have to cancel these plans because of inadequate sales on the first season pass, as they would if they outright announced a season pass that never manifested. And yet they still get to start hinting early on and thus keep enthusiasm for the future DLC plans (and the game itself) sustaining interest while there is still high consumer buy-in. And 3) it creates a situation where the upcoming DLC stays on the minds of fans as they continue to debate the exact content likely to be included. This last point explains why the codenames are fairly obvious: they want to give an impression that tugs at the hopes of those who want particular characters, but which is also vague enough that there is sufficient enough doubt to sustain debate. Honestly, my first impression was actually that this stunt is so painfully obvious that they ought to be a little embarrassed at how obvious their non-leak leak is.
In any event, I don't think the codenames are there to be particularly misleading; after-all, if they were truly concerned about their plans not being known, they just would not have allowed those references to go in at all until they were needed at the time of their release. Besides, game developers actually generally want to share their plans for upcoming content; the reasons for keeping it under wraps are often business oriented--for example, not wanting to have to deal with frustrated fan expectations if content is cut or the exact plans for that content change. Hinting at upcoming content through "unintentional" code references in this way allows them to thread the needle; they release such an incredibly small and vague amount of information that longterm fans can read between the lines and begin to get hyped about what is coming, but if plans change, they can cut content, cancel the DLC entirely, or make alterations at their whim. And they don't have to worry about a PR backlash from players griping about how they bought the game just because the company said X would be in it, and now that's not happening and they feel cheated. After-all, if you bought the game in anticipation of something that you saw speculated upon on a board somewhere, based on a one-word reference dug out of the code...well, even the most entitled gaming communities are unlikely to lay that at Namco's feet. It's kind of brilliant, really.