Fake PSN Names Sound Just Like Real Ones

This week Sony finally announced that PlayStation Network users will be able to change their IDs in the near future. To commemorate this occasion, I asked people on Twitter to tweet five online Game Person Names at me, four of which were fake, and one of which was real.

On this week’s Kotaku XP, Gita and I sorted through your tweets, and tried our best to guess which names were real.

Everyone has a go-to fake user name they bring up in conversation when they’re talking about some jerk who was behaving like an idiot in a multiplayer game one day way back when.

Here is an example which combines all of the most common tropes that spring instantly to one’s imagination when considering mythological video game player handles: “xX_GokuSephiroth_42069_Xx.”

For the purpose of the grisly quiz gauntlet we’d taken it upon ourselves to endure, I quickly laid down a loose rule: Any name you presented us which contained an on-the-nose 420 or 69, “xX” and “Xx” as bookends, or the names “Cloud Strife”, “Goku” or “Sephiroth” were obvious fabrications.

This rule served us well, until we reached a Twitter user whose name literally contained a “69”. At that point, all bets were off and we became utterly lost in the impossibility of the contest.

This episode is a little longer than usual. I promised on Twitter that I would address everyone’s tweets, and apparently a lot of you like making up fake Gamertags.

Many of our readers were more than too smart for this weird exercise. Many of you executed multiple circa-2006 meme references with laser precision, making it nearly impossible to separate truth from fiction. At one point this crowdsourced befuddlement required me to yell, “Why is it a ‘meme’ to like Frasier?”

Of course, we need you to watch the episode and leave a comment telling us if we got your name right. Next week I’ll calculate our score and present it on the show, either with pride or with shame.

At the end of this week’s episode, we address your answers to last week’s question of which book you would most like to see made into a huge-budget video game.