VGC: Nintendo has successfully acquired a US patent covering the ability to summon characters in a game and make them battle for you

So Persona 6 and 4 remake are dead? The only licence I really care at this point is dead? If so, fan games and retro mods will be the only solution left.

Is it just for the US or worldwide?
 
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Patents are the source of much of the world's biggest problems. It needs to be reigned in way back if we hope to function as a society.
 
No ones gonna obey this, much like no one obeys that other patent they made about characters moving along with moving objects they're on top of (aka basic physics)
 
How the actual fuck did the patent office let this go through?? Like there's rules against this and they just let it slide lmao
 
As Skeptical mentioned and also as Guilty_AI just said, all the concern about this will most likely amount to nothing. Nintendo isn't cornering the market on RPGs with summons, all your favorite games will still exist, and as with most of these patents, we'll probably never hear about this ever again in live courtroom action.

Publishers and media imprints are having to run their legal teams through silly patent processes because patent trolls are out there doing it if they don't. When a company has a massive franchise predicated upon a mechanic which seems impatentable, it is not in their best interest to make damned sure it cannot be patented, and if it can, take it before somebody else does. That's happening with a lot of game technology; we read on GAF all the time posts about Sony patenting handheld game devices or adjust game difficulty when players die too much or any other bone-simple concept, but we're not hearing of them going scortched-earth on the industry with their patent. That's not how they plan to make their money. They need to protect themselves.


There was even some talk years ago that the game industry titans acquire patents with the clear interest of icing out trolls, establishing a kind of cold war-state where all the weapons to be used against anyone was owned by the megapowers, and they would in good faith respect the field by never using them. I don't think that ever formed as formal policy, or that any game publisher has mentioned that in response to queries about why they filed these patents, but that's still the going theory in business that it's better functional companies own patents before dysfunctional ones go for them.

It's possible that this patent might be used in an ugly way some time down the road (although just this one regional patent wouldn't have much power if it really came to blows,) but it's pretty safe to consider it meaningless, same as so many in the past. I don't think it does much good to worry about it.
 
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A more recent example is the "nemesis system". It's a novel concept, but worthy of patent protection? I think not. But alas, it is patented, which is why we haven't seen it outside the two Mordor games.

Naw, I doubt that's why we haven't seen it again.

The "nemesis system" hasn't been seen in games outside of the Mordor games, even in any WB products, because it's a massive pain in the ass to design a system with gameplay dependent upon intricacies of individual NPCs being affected by player interactions across the full play campaign. Action games hardly benefit from that level of miniscule difference (a developer can shift stats around and track event/object variables when a player accomplishes an action, but the idea pitched in SoM that like, 'If you kill his brother with fire, your the Nemesis will be afraid of fire!', that really doesn't do a lot to differentiate how you button-mash and dash/parry/strike foes in a normal game. And in a RPG, detail is more appreciated, but it's still difficult and often fruitless to turn the littlest details (much of which the player won't even remember doing) into stats actionable in combat or items or quest goals or even conversations. If a game is going to customize its story progression based on player choices (and few actually do, and as is notable from grudges still held over perceptions of Fable and the Mass Effects promising this, fewer still actually do it well,) it's usually best when the action is noticeable and purposeful; track some other stats as well to color in the lines.

Nemesis System is more than just persistent minor choices, but when you dig into what its math was, I think you can see why it was a rarity in games. Monolith did it fine enough in one game and one sequel, then tried to do it in a third game (with a character who actually has inherent characteristics and even weapons which encourage meaningful interaction with foes,) yet they crashed and burned trying to make Wonder Woman, and in the meantime WB has never hinted of even attempting an NPC record system concept like this again.


There's plenty of wiggle room even with the patent where a developer could do plenty of things to affect the world or characters and get Nemesis-like persistence yet not get sued. Especially with AI coming on (which could easily go wild on tracking persistent elements and patterns across play sessions, that's what it loves to do, the hard part would be writing it back into the game,) there's a likelihood that we'll see deeper persistence on a previously unuseful level to find a use for all that data. But I've never heard of a developer say, "Oh man, we had this great idea for our game, but then we heard about this "Nemesis System" patent..."
 
A classic example is the patent for having a loading screen minigame (back when loading times could be way longer than these days). It expired in 2015, but before that... yeah, they didn't exist. Because of said patent.

Eh, maybe...

There certainly was a lot of talk about the scare of the big company coming for anybody who tried to test their patent power, and this was early enough in games that companies really were in bitter and friendless competition. I can't find any lawsuits Namco actually brought against a developer who offered a in-load minigame, but maybe it did happen?

That said, minigames during loading are a bad idea in game design. For one thing, it detracts from the actual game you're trying to get players to love, and it makes them more aware that the game they bought has this burdenous loadtime to wait through. Are you there for the game, or the minigame? Moreover, it's counter to what the loading screen process is trying to do, which is load the game. You have this secondary application in memory and running while the disc is spooling in and decompressing and preparing all the info it needs to run the game as quick as it can; and then when you're done, that application is useless and resident. Loading a quick graphic and using the base game systems to show text or data is small in content also also can help set the player up to learn the game or prepare for the next level, so that's worth it for whatever little bit of time/data and to-be-active content it takes to do, but even that needs to be efficient so that players spend as much time as possible playing.

There's a reason why Namco, owner of this patent, hardly ever used it in their own games. Or why loading screen minigames didn't leap into popularity once the patent ran out in 2015. (Loads were starting to fall back by then, but NBA 2K MyCareer players would have loved one around that time.)

Also notable, Namco's patent was specifically for an "auxiliary game program code" in addition to the main game. There are ways to get around that, especially if the minigame wasn't an "auxilary game program", but was instead part of the main game code repurposed for mini-play use, or if it was included in the regular game data and didn't need to be loaded before the main game program code. We saw a number of games do this by using the first bits of the game loaded or the resident portions not dumped in level transitions, so if you had the character loaded up already, you could build a simple minigame around that. (Back in the PS1 era where this was most desperately needed, probably nothing was fast enough or kept resident to make this a viable option for most games, but still, there were ways around Namco's patent, whether or not it actually had teeth.)



Here's the actual patent text, BTW.

A recording medium, a method of loading games program code, and a games machine is provided. The recording medium has a program code relating to an auxiliary game and a program code relating to a main game. The size of the auxiliary game program code is small compared to the size of the main-game program code, and the relationship between the auxiliary game program code and the main-game program code is such that the auxiliary game program code is loaded first, before the main game program code. Unnecessary wastage of time can be prevented by first loading the smaller, auxiliary game program code into the games machine, before the main-game program code is loaded, then loading the main-game program code while the auxiliary game is running.
 
They are flying dangerously close to "Fuck Nintendo"-territory.
Nintendo are arguably one of the most, if not the most anti-consumer and anti competitive gaming companies around. Heck even EA and Microsoft are slowly getting better.

Fuck them tbh. Can't imagine how the games industry would be like had not Sony come in with PlayStation.
 
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While this patent is ridiculous, it's not as all-encompassing as people are making out to be. Read the OP: it's for games where the main playable character brings forth another sub-character to do battle on their behalf WHILE BEING CONTROLLED by the player. It's pretty limited in scope if you take all the factors into consideration, but still shouldn't have been granted.

I'm not familiar with the mechanics from some of the games mentioned already, but most are safe from this. So, no, this does not cover necromancers that have been mentioned a bunch. Those characters not only are not directly controlled by the player when brought in, but they fight alongside the necromancer, not in his place.
 
While this patent is ridiculous, it's not as all-encompassing as people are making out to be. Read the OP: it's for games where the main playable character brings forth another sub-character to do battle on their behalf WHILE BEING CONTROLLED by the player. It's pretty limited in scope if you take all the factors into consideration, but still shouldn't have been granted.

I'm not familiar with the mechanics from some of the games mentioned already, but most are safe from this. So, no, this does not cover necromancers that have been mentioned a bunch. Those characters not only are not directly controlled by the player when brought in, but they fight alongside the necromancer, not in his place.
So World of Warcraft, owned by Activision-Blizzard, owned by Microsoft is in violation of their patent rights for pet battles? No clue how these patent laws work, are these things applied retroactively?
 
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Nintendo are arguably one of the most, if not the most anti-consumer and anti competitive gaming companies around. Heck even EA and Microsoft are slowly getting better.

Fuck them tbh. Can't imagine how the games industry would be like had not Sony come in with PlayStation.
I doubt it would be much different either way.
 
So what does this mean exactly? No more summons in Final Fantasy games? No more Conjuring magic in Elder Scrolls games? Digimon and Palword need to close up shop essentially? This is such a wide net that it can mean anything.
The fact that this patent went through so easily means that the people passing it had no idea what it actually means in the gaming landscape.
 
Nitendo is one the most anti consumer and anti industry companies out there currently and the amount of leeway they get from the industry and their stans is disgusting. They have consistently used their lawyers to strong arm indiduals and the system to fuck people over and yet watch their fanboys defend this shit by saying some stupid inane shit like "don't hate the player, hate the game".
 
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A lot of hatred on this forum man, but the one you are responding to takes the cake. Tell me you hate a whole group of people without actually saying it.
The fella in question is a consummate asshole in every thread he shows up in. Just place him on ignore fellas, trust me. He contributes nothing but negativity and never has any information, and he's a huge console warrior, culture warrior, and hates America. Guy's just a piece of shit :/, you lose nothing from not seeing him. I prefer not to ignore people here, but there are a good few users that contribute nothing to this forum and you're better off not seeing them.

Hmm.....and at least two of them are giant lizard avatars.....
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The fella in question is a consummate asshole in every thread he shows up in. Just place him on ignore fellas, trust me. He contributes nothing but negativity and never has any information, and he's a huge console warrior, culture warrior, and hates America. Guy's just a piece of shit :/, you lose nothing from not seeing him. I prefer not to ignore people here, but there are a good few users that contribute nothing to this forum and you're better off not seeing them.

Hmm.....and at least two of them are giant lizard avatars.....
Donald Trump Animation GIF by Richie Brown
Definitely on ignore now, thanks! I don't understand why people have to be like that. I'm all for having strong opinions on here, I've done it plenty and a lot of people have probably ignored me for it, but I would never in a million years blatantly hate anyone or a group of people for their beliefs, even more true on a gaming board where the whole point is to have discussions on differing opinions.
 
Definitely on ignore now, thanks! I don't understand why people have to be like that. I'm all for having strong opinions on here, I've done it plenty and a lot of people have probably ignored me for it, but I would never in a million years blatantly hate anyone or a group of people for their beliefs, even more true on a gaming board where the whole point is to have discussions on differing opinions.
Yeah, honestly the negativity of this place needs a purge. This is easily, EASILY, the best gaming forum on the Internet and it's not close. It's the only one left that encourages unbiased discussion and dissent, but it just needs to crunch down a little harder on the culture and console warriors and the absolute rudeness of posters. We do live in a polite society, so it turns out that society does run better when people are polite. A lot of socially inept, somewhat hermit like gamers never really learn how to speak to others properly, and that unfortunately does continue on to how they speak to others on the Internet, and it's a real bummer how it spreads and then more and more people just start behaving like cretins and assholes.

That kind of behavior needs to be snuffed out early so people know what's acceptable and what's not.
 
Yeah, honestly the negativity of this place needs a purge. This is easily, EASILY, the best gaming forum on the Internet and it's not close. It's the only one left that encourages unbiased discussion and dissent, but it just needs to crunch down a little harder on the culture and console warriors and the absolute rudeness of posters. We do live in a polite society, so it turns out that society does run better when people are polite. A lot of socially inept, somewhat hermit like gamers never really learn how to speak to others properly, and that unfortunately does continue on to how they speak to others on the Internet, and it's a real bummer how it spreads and then more and more people just start behaving like cretins and assholes.

That kind of behavior needs to be snuffed out early so people know what's acceptable and what's not.
Agreed. I think it's tough for the mods to keep up though. And I think too many people are afraid to report posts. I rarely do it, but if someone says some off the wall just flat out dumb stuff, I definitely will.
 
This is not a "USA" thing.
Nothing is 'x' exclusive in life, but US has a long and rich history of incredibly dumb patents, their patent system is well documented to be problematic.
From MS patenting 'use of images captured by Web cam as user avatar graphics in application UI' to Creative patenting 'use of volumetric shadows in games' to the crown jewel that was patent for infinite(lossless) compression back in the 90ies.

Do you really think a multi-billion dollar company just yolos its patent writing process?
Not by choice, but as Jeff Bezos famously said, "good intentions don't work". And it's rather common for these corps to have KPI targets like "file N+ patent in a year".
 
wtf are you even saying? FOH with this nonsense…imagine trying to derail this thread to make it about a whole country of people… really a bigoted comment 🤦‍♂️
Bigoted? Is it wrong of me to take issue with Americas legal system which CONSTANTLY facilitates these ridiculous patents and allows dickhead companies like Nintendo to act on them…YOU are making it about bigotry sensitive little American 🤡
 
THE SWITCH 2 IS AWESOME THOUGH THAT MAKES NINTEDNO BEHIVIOR ALRIGHT.

Pathetic company who is lucky for their demographic of grown children and actual kids. If it wasn't for this crap they do I would not be against them. And calling a spade a spade is something the fans have to deal with.
 
Naw, I doubt that's why we haven't seen it again.

The "nemesis system" hasn't been seen in games outside of the Mordor games, even in any WB products, because it's a massive pain in the ass to design a system with gameplay dependent upon intricacies of individual NPCs being affected by player interactions across the full play campaign. Action games hardly benefit from that level of miniscule difference (a developer can shift stats around and track event/object variables when a player accomplishes an action, but the idea pitched in SoM that like, 'If you kill his brother with fire, your the Nemesis will be afraid of fire!', that really doesn't do a lot to differentiate how you button-mash and dash/parry/strike foes in a normal game. And in a RPG, detail is more appreciated, but it's still difficult and often fruitless to turn the littlest details (much of which the player won't even remember doing) into stats actionable in combat or items or quest goals or even conversations. If a game is going to customize its story progression based on player choices (and few actually do, and as is notable from grudges still held over perceptions of Fable and the Mass Effects promising this, fewer still actually do it well,) it's usually best when the action is noticeable and purposeful; track some other stats as well to color in the lines.

Nemesis System is more than just persistent minor choices, but when you dig into what its math was, I think you can see why it was a rarity in games. Monolith did it fine enough in one game and one sequel, then tried to do it in a third game (with a character who actually has inherent characteristics and even weapons which encourage meaningful interaction with foes,) yet they crashed and burned trying to make Wonder Woman, and in the meantime WB has never hinted of even attempting an NPC record system concept like this again.


There's plenty of wiggle room even with the patent where a developer could do plenty of things to affect the world or characters and get Nemesis-like persistence yet not get sued. Especially with AI coming on (which could easily go wild on tracking persistent elements and patterns across play sessions, that's what it loves to do, the hard part would be writing it back into the game,) there's a likelihood that we'll see deeper persistence on a previously unuseful level to find a use for all that data. But I've never heard of a developer say, "Oh man, we had this great idea for our game, but then we heard about this "Nemesis System" patent..."

I personally always thought the Nemesis system was insanely overrated. I thought what Dragon Age and Mass Effect did with save data carrying over and changing the world in the next game was a much better idea and that's one I'm surprised hasn't been used more by devs. Although it was poorly done in Dragon Age honestly.
 
Copy / Paste from Reddit from some random person cause me lazy:

The actual patent is a lot more specific than that; if it were so broad, it would never be able to go through because games like Shin Megami Tensei predate Pokémon by years and are still ongoing.

The patent is specifically talking about monster capturing and summoning through the mechanics seen in Legends Arceus and AZ; basically capturing and summoning monster with a sphere in real time, among other factors. You would have to be very blatantly ripping off those games to trigger this patent.

Like, I'm all for dunking on Pokémon, but this article is fear baiting.


 
Copy / Paste from Reddit from some random person cause me lazy:

The actual patent is a lot more specific than that; if it were so broad, it would never be able to go through because games like Shin Megami Tensei predate Pokémon by years and are still ongoing.

The patent is specifically talking about monster capturing and summoning through the mechanics seen in Legends Arceus and AZ; basically capturing and summoning monster with a sphere in real time, among other factors. You would have to be very blatantly ripping off those games to trigger this patent.

Like, I'm all for dunking on Pokémon, but this article is fear baiting.



So, in short, the usual fear-mongering nonsense without context.
 
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