Forspoken is out on PS5 next week, and as is usually the case just days before the release of any big budget title, more casual consumers are starting to show interest thanks to advertising campaigns and the like. Forspoken has a very specific problem on its hands, though, as recent Google search trends suggest that autocorrect could actually be diverting people away from the game.
As reported by PlayStation LifeStyle, 'Forsaken' has seen a significant increase in search traffic over the last few days, presumably because either people's phones are autocorrecting 'Forspoken', or because people simply can't remember the game's name to begin with. And to be fair, Forspoken is a pretty awkward name.
Searching for 'Forsaken game', for example, will fetch results regarding Forsaken β a first-person shooter from 1998 (which actually released on the original PlayStation). Other Google trends include 'Forsaken release date' and 'Forsaken PS5'.
While we doubt that this'll prove to be anything more than a minor obstacle for the upcoming action game, it still makes for an interesting little study. It's entirely possible that 'Forsaken' related searches will continue to rise over the next few days.
Have you gotten Forsa-- we mean, er, Forspoken's name wrong before? Make sure you spell it correctly in the comments section below.
[source playstationlifestyle.net]
Comments 46
That is interesting. I had a good time with the demo, though I found it less visually striking than I had expected, but yeah the tile is a bit unremarkable β¦
This reminds me of the tech company named Nothing.
Yeah. Brilliant. Makes it REALLY easy to find out about what you make.
SEO is a hard thing to get right.
You have to be unique enough so that people can find you, but familiar enough that people can spell it properly. Itβs a fine line to walk on.
It'll take some doing to beat 'Control' in terms of visibility in Google searches, but this is pretty funny.
I still get the name confused all the time, horrible choice of name imo. If there ever was a game that you should wait for reviews before purchasing is this one! Is usually never a good sign when there's a strict review embargo on a game.
I suspect the game's biggest fight will be with mediocrity. It doesn't look like a classic in my eyes....
I am reminded of a joke from Peep Show. Super Hans' band was called "Various Artists" just to make things difficult for people with iPhones π€£
@pip_muzz Peep Show is great, and everyone should check it out!
They could have stuck with Athia, but noooooo.....
I guess with Square it could be worse, it could have been Forespoken Intermean: Premonitions of the Antiquic Age of Diminishing Returns: Retrospec
In this case, it's really a net win though. Foresaken is an awesome 3D bullet hell Descent-style game that everyone should play and would be amazing in PSVR. Forespoken....not so much from what I've seen.
Seriously though I do wonder how companies pick titles they pick. I just found out the other day that Judgement is not Judgement, it's Judgment. Never even noticed that before.
@Impossibilium 100%
It reminds me of a thing I read somewhere* that if you wanted to change your name and disappear best thing you could do was to name yourself after someone famous.
(* Can't remember whether it was a real post or a fiction novel... but aren't they almost the same thing nowadays? Or at least mixed up the whole time
This proves that "forspoken" is a very poor name; the working name "Project Athia" was much better. They could name the game simply "Athia" and it would also be better. It seems that same people that poorly wrote the dumb conversations between Frey and her bracelet (or whatever that is) also decided the name of the game creating this ludicrous problem.
@NEStalgia Judgment is the American spelling (hence why it was chosen over the English one)
Same reason the new Sonic remaster was called Sonic Colors and not Colours.
It's annoying but it is what it is
To be fair, itβs not necessarily a bad thing that people may pick up a vintage FPS like Forsaken. It was an alright Quake-like.
@pip_muzz I still get annoyed by Dishonored
Reminds me of MediEvil and plain old medieval.
@NEStalgia To be fair, that'd not confuse Google that much.
Auto carrot strikes again.
@Jayslow LOL! That reminds me of my auto correct that for some reason every time I type "consoles" it corrects it to "cond**s".....every single time. You have no idea how many times I've almost posted discussion about that to this site!
I think @rjejr has one the corrects Nintendo to "deodorant" if I'm not mistaken
@pip_muzz colors/colours gray/grey is definitely a UK vs US English thing, but judgement/judgment isn't as cut ant dry. I'm a yank, but have only ever seen it written as judgement in the US even in legal documents. Meanwhile you can find "judgment" in UK writings even in legal documents as well.
As far as I'm concerned, even as a yank, judgment is just poor spelling
@themightyant IDK I changed my name to Geoff Keighley and the internet won't leave me alone now!
I have a feeling it might earn that name in the near future π
@NEStalgia It's the suit and trainers. #fashionicon
@NEStalgia "corrects Nintendo to "deodorant""
Yeah, it was autocorrect, that's the ticket. π My family still makes fun of me for that. π
Based on how I think this game is going to sell they should have called it "Callisto Protcol". π€£
@themightyant ...but my next post is going to be mind-blowing. Keep your expectations in check, but it'll be so absolutely amazing and I'm so excited to share it with you!
@rjejr At least your autocorrect doesn't replace "consoles" with inappropriate conversation that attracts moderator attention Though in gaming circles "deodorant" may be construed as an offensive word.....
I was thinking Forespoken: Two for $20 because that's how it'll be listed in Gamestop dump tables in 2 months
What a pain in the areas for fans
@YourNameHere Absolutely they should. Wonderful show.
I loved Forsaken. Had it on N64 and recently got the remastered version very cheaply on Xbox. Great game that still holds up today.
@NEStalgia please understandβ¦
Forsaken is about right. I played the demo and decided to forsake it.
Like Gods and Monsters, Project Athia (even if I thought it had an e somewhere and when searching found it as a name for other tech things maybe) is a better name to search Athia game/Athia PS5. I myself got confused at first about the name but enough times seeing trailers and saying it out loud I got used to Forspoken. Outer Worlds/Outer Wilds was the best confusion. I think companies need to look at better naming structures for their games whether Outer/War, Phenix/Fenix/Phoenix, a mix of words.
I have a bunch I can name of times I forgot what it was/mess the title in the last few years for games yes but even a tv show.
(Immortals Phenix Rising which the Phenix part, I mean Fenix, makes the point well here doesn't it. Why didn't they just call it Phoenix instead, sigh. Stumps me as much as Immortals for the title then the subtitle so Gods and Monsters was much better. The Monster Energy title excuse is dumb if true we don't have Monstercat the music label or others getting hit with it so eh to company's advertising or big brands having dumb names.
Mythic Quest Raven's Banquet the MMO 'The Office' style game dev tv show is a great one I also can't say properly (which when I put in conversation against 'New Game' the game dev anime is hilariously awkward) I also only remember the subtitle of Raven's Banquet not Mythic Quest (maybe because of FF Mystic Quest??? I don't know) or Stranger's Paradise I only remember the FF Origin part. Have the same issue saying Warframe, War Thunder and I think another exists too I get confused by I don't play those games either so when bringing them up in conversation when Warframe comes up in trailers I get confused by the name) So as a gamer yes I am having trouble remembering names to games and tv shows advertising companies/creators of said projects. XD
I won't deny that it's great having a stand out title but it is a very different one that most people are likely not used to using in sentences either so it's a very strange word and autocorrect won't be turned off by most people either so not surprised auto correct is evil and I mess up typing "know" or "only" many times and I have yet to delete them but I can't highlight them to do that grrrrrr thanks GBoard on Android. Of course I don't have that issue on PC but still as I turn it off but I turn suggestions off I try to work around auto correct and still. Sigh.
It's better though than 'New Yorker Gets Whisked Away To Fantasy World' or something in a light novel title way but in some cases it my have been better but Athia is still better. XD I probably have gotten WipEout (the e, i or another letter that I put the captial wrong) or MediEvil wrong too and thinking "wait is it the 'e' or is it the 'i' that's capital there'.
Or even better the one racing title that (while Japanese only so the English is a direct translation I think) is easy to get mixed up is (Racing Battle: C1 Grand Prix), which proves it as I was going to say Racing C1 Battle Grand Prix because it's a mouthful and easy to get each word in the wrong order at least once (did so when learning about the game from a video covering it and they got the words mixed up) and I myself also do mix up the order of letters as proved before I did a check myself before posting. XD
So some like Forspoken/Forsaken and War Thunder/Warframe I think are great examples of too many uses of a word can be a bad thing (the amount of Infinity, Legacy, Odyssey and more can also be contributed to that) and Forspoken being a not often used word can be confusing and a mix up just random words that fit the content can be too. XD
Some companies should take notes on this.
I always thought Project Athia was a better name honestly.
The game should have been called "Outspoken".
Perfect fit for Frey's personality.
And it would have created no problems with autocorrects.
Win-Win!
@Shinnok789 Would work better for sure. At least it isn't Outer Worlds/Wilds and at least Fuse didn't use Overstrike.
I had very high hopes for this game was looking forward to it for so long tried the demo weeks back and was very let down.
The controls need work the combat needs work. I'm passing on this at launch got a bad feeling about it. Just got done reading Forbes and square Enix patched the demo. IF you got to patch a demo it makes me question about the full games as a whole. The game is also very poorly optimized for pc needing a whooping 32gigs of ram and the nivida 40 just for 4k and 60fps. I'm urging any one not to buy into the hype wait for reviews. I tried the demo on ps5 and was going to buy it for ps5. I'm seeing this as one of those really really bad games that takes a years worth of patches and updates to get right. This is another beta test on launch day type of deal.
@NEStalgia The GameStop near me, in the parking lot of Target and Home Depot, shut down a couple of years ago, so now I only know them as a "meme stock", as a retailer I forget they exist. Should probably cancel my credit card.π
Should have called it Codsh*t. Easy to spell and memorize
I can vouch for that as almost all the time when I type Forspoken on my computer it autocorrects it to Forsaken.
As for the game, I have it pre-ordered from Walmart. Now the only question will be is if I actually get it on release day. I've been looking forward to Forspoken for quite a while despite people whining about the dialogue.
@rjejr I can't imagine why a GameStop in a Target parking lot might have low sales.... π
just try "black girl magic game ps5" and it works flawlessly
@KilloWertz
Download the demo and try it, anyone can..it is quite annoying as far as the bracelet (cuffs) dialogue goes...
@Quintumply nah. If you type "control game" on Google, it's the first thing that comes up.
@NEStalgia I used to think that all the time. GameStop did have a better Disney Infinity toy section. π
@rjejr Target has a larger deodorant selection, though.
@SuntannedDuck2 You mentioned Stranger of Paradise, which is a hilarious example where the name is so awkward the actual official name of the game when in your game library is "SOPFFO" LOL. if you own the game and want to find it, you search neither for "Final Fantasy" nor "Stranger of Paradise", you just find "SOPFFO" awkwardly in your digital game library. I've taken to just calling it "Sopfo" forever more. Which sounds like an NPC from FFIX.
@NEStalgia "Target has a larger deodorant selection"
Part of the 5 aisles wide "manscaping" section. π
@amriddle01 I did download it just in case I ever got the urge to try it, but outside of the reviews being bad and then me having to try it to make sure I'd actually like it, I still will pass on playing it. I have always been fairly confident in the game, and would rather go into the game cold.
As for the dialogue from the bracelet/cuffs, I doubt I'll have a problem with it. While I know some people hate it when a character talks a lot when they are trying to give hints and such often, that stuff has never really bothered me.
Forsaken was great game despite one of the ugliest covers...
Forspoken? Yes, pretty bad name.
Autocorrect? (for those who still uses it) One of the stupidiest thing coders created, and another step into humankind dumbness.
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