Sony Patent Aims To Change Game Difficulty In Real Time As You Play
Sony Patent Aims To Change Game Difficulty In Real Time As You Play
Sony has published a patent that talks of amending in-game difficulty levels in real time as a player perhaps struggles or succeeds with certain elements
Isnt this done by many games already?
Yeah, but now we get to be robbed of a feature, like we were when Namco patented playing mini-games on loading screens. We needn't have suffered as much during the worst years of loading.
A lot of arcade games already do this.
Sony is making sure they can't do it in the future
Thing is, it's fucking easy to dispute this patent because of how many other games already do something extremely similar. Adaptive difficulty isn't a novel idea. That they think they can patent it shows how broken that system is.
On a side note, the site had this other gem: New Sony Patent Will Let You Replay A Game From Any Point Possible. From the name, I thought they were patenting savestates, like those you do with emulators. But nope, it's dumber and more convoluted than that, closely tied to streaming, somehow.
Anyway, fuck Sony and this patent bullshit
afaik software patents get awards based on the implementation details. So Sony could get a patent if they implemented this behavior in a novel way.
Although I do agree with you this is a basic feature in many games and that sold be recognized.
I think the "novel way" in this case is the idea that games can look at your data from other games to adjust difficulty. So if you do well in God of War, the AI difficulty in the new Devil May Cry could get harder. Ditto the other way around.
I would say it's a newish idea. I don't see it as particularly innovative, though. We just don't do it NOW because it's stupid.
If it's optional, whatever, but if it's a forced game "feature", that would suck. I am perfectly capable of choosing the difficulty of the game I'm playing. Sometimes I want a good challenge, sometimes I don't, but I never need the game to decide for me that I'm taking too long or going too fast. Screw all of that.
I would be moderately peeved if the game just decided to let me win. Clearing the sword saint in sekiro was a triumph. If the game made it easier because I was taking a while, it would cheapen the win.
Some people don't enjoy the challenge and would probably enjoy this, though. Utterly alien to me, but they exist.
Good news for you, then: This patent means companies other than Sony won't have adaptive difficulty for a whiiile. Remember how Crazy Taxi patented arrows pointing to your objective so every other game for 20 years had to do batshit indicators to get around it?
Fuck you sony. I have still not forgiven WB Studios for patenting the nemesis system and never using it anymore.
Permanently Deleted
There's also a huge risk of this being misapplied. I remember way back in PS2 days, I was struggling with a jumping puzzle in the original God of War so much so that the game jumped in with a prompt offering to turn down difficulty. But turning down the difficulty in God of War reduces combat difficulty, nothing to do with the huge friggin' hole I kept falling into from mis-timing jumps.
Honestly, every game I've played that offers scaling difficulty based on performance has been because I sucked at the platforming parts that they couldn't make easier with a setting. Maybe it's a hint that I should stop playing platformers.
My biggest hate to any non-interactive difficulty is that players change.
What if I take a 1-year break? I haven't gone back to playing Go because I have a ranking I know I can't maintain, and do not want to play games where I'm giving handicaps to people who I won't be able to beat on an even level.
But yes, there's also "different things are harder to different people"
laughs at Sony because of the inevitable patent challenge from Valve via Left 4 Dead.
The original Homeworld also scaled difficulty based on how well you were doing on previous levels.
Huh, I didn't know about that mechanic in that series. I never really did end up liking L4D much, and thinking back on it, probably my biggest issue with the game was a feeling that I never really improved. No matter what I did, every time I played felt like I couldn't catch up, and it wasn't an enjoyable, "challenging" feeling. It was just frustrating.
Does this mean other game publishers get sued if they use dynamic difficulty?
No. Only if they use the same system. That's what's being patented, not the concept of dynamic difficulty.
Good to know, thanks.
In theory no, practically speaking the patent system is absurdly dumb around anything IT. Multiple patents which Apple won against Samsung with got invalidated which cut part of the awards issued
Good to know, thanks.
Yes
Compile did this like a million years ago in Zanac.
https://64.media.tumblr.com/a39cf9072d54b83f4d31f2b20cf525c4/tumblr_mslnpg9cGx1qbw2q1o1_1280.jpg
fuck you, sony!
What I like more than this is when games make every individual aspect of difficulty (e.g. enemy health, enemy aggression, enemy damage, etc.) something you can tweak in the accessibility menu. Spider-Man 2 and The Last of Us Part 1 are two good examples of this.
Don't Starve is probably the supreme example of this. It's great. You can adjust difficulty in specific areas.
I think there are toggles for that in the first Spider-Man as well. It's there in the System Shock remake, too, as well as (I think) Jedi: Survivor.
I loved this in Mount and Blade: Warband, not sure if it made it into Bannerlord.
1, remember that video game patents are rarely actually applied to anything real. 2, this has been a thing since at least the ps2, not in this globalized way, but games like ratchet and clank adjusted difficulty based on performance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nJtd8AJghM&t=0 Interesting video why dynamic difficulty isn't the holy grail. Hope they leave it in as an option and don't force it on the player
I'm fine with dynamic difficulty, if it's something that the designers bake into the game, which is already done in many cases.
Yeah but this is about sony fucking patenting the concept, which is dumb as hell.
Almost as dumb as Nintendo patenting the concept of a sanity meter and then not fucking doing anything with it since Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem.
It is dumb as hell yeah. Well, probably smart in a business sense, because it's an excuse to collect more minute-by-minute user metrics for a seemingly innocent purpose (when really you know it's just going to be gamed to crank up engagement, and trick people into spending money - ie marketing)
As long as you can still manually change the difficulty or turn it off, it sounds like it could be interesting.
I'd be frustrated if I kept having to adjust it back.
SBMM for single player? As long as it means actual focus on some good single player game content it sounds ok.
Why copyright this? They do more harm to the industry than their games and consoles can ever compensate!
